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Sergeant-Major Cowley said:

'Sergeant-Major Ledoux said it was like a cattle-stampede on the...some river where they come from. You couldn't stop them, sir. It was their first German plane...And they going up the line to-night, sir.'

'To-night!' Tietjens exclaimed. 'Next Christmas!' The sergeant-major said:

'Poor boys!' and continued to gaze into the distance. 'I heard another good one, sir,' he said. 'The answer to the one about the King saluting a private soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he's dead...But if you marched a company into a field through a gateway and you wanted to get it out again but you did not know any command in the drill book for change of direction, what would you do, sir?...You have to get that company out, but you must not use About Turn, or Right or Left Wheel...There's another one, too, about saluting...The officer in charge of draft is Second-Lieutenant Hotchkiss...But he's an A.S.C. officer and turned of sixty. A farrier he is, sir in civil life. An A.S.C. major was asking me, sir, very civil, if you could not detail someone else. He says he doubts if Second Lieutenant Hitchcock...Hotchkiss could walk as far as the station, let alone march the men, him not knowing anything but cavalry words of command, if he knows them. He's only been in the army a fortnight...'

Tietjens turned from the idyllic scene with the words:

'I suppose the Canadian sergeant-major and Lieutenant Hotchkiss are doing what they can to get their men come back.'

He re-entered the hut.

Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically brilliant hurricane lamp appeared to be bathing dejectedly in a surf of coiling papers spread on the table before him.

'There's all this bumph,' he said, 'just come from all the headquarters in the bally world.'

Tietjens said cheerfully:

'What's it all about?' There were, the other answered, Garrison Headquarter orders, Divisional orders, Lines of Communication orders, half a dozen A.F.W.B. two four two's. A terrific strafe from First Army forwarded from Garrison H.Q. about the draft's not having reached Hazebrouck the day before yesterday. Tietjens said:

'Answer them politely to the effect that we had orders not to send off the draft without its complement of four hundred Canadian Railway Service men--the fellows in furred hoods. They only reached us from Etaples at five this afternoon without blankets or ring papers. Or any other papers for the matter of that.'

Mackenzie was studying with increased gloom a small buff memorandum slip:

'This appears to be meant for you privately,' he said.

'I can't make head or tail of it otherwise. It isn't marked private.'

He tossed the buff slip across the table.

Tietjens sank down bulkily on to his bully-beef case. He read on the buff at first the initials of the signature, 'E.C. Genl.', and then: 'For God's sake keep your wife off me. I will not have skirts round my H.Q. You are more trouble to me than all the rest of my command put together.'

Tietjens groaned and sank more deeply on to his beef case. It was as if an unseen and unsuspected wild beast had jumped on his neck from an over-hanging branch. The sergeant-major at his side said in his most admirable butler manner:

'Colour-Sergeant Morgan and Lance-Corporal Trench are obliging us by coming from depot orderly room to help with the draft's papers. Why don't you and the other officer go and get a bit of dinner, sir? The colonel and the padre have only just come in to mess, and I've warned the mess orderlies to keep your food 'ot...Both good men with papers, Morgan and Trench. We can send the soldiers' small books to you at table to sign...'

His feminine solicitude enraged and overwhelmed Tietjens with blackness. He told the sergeant-major that he was to go to hell, for he himself was not going to leave that hut till the draft was moved off. Captain Mackenzie could do as he pleased. The sergeant-major told Captain Mackenzie that Captain Tietjens took as much trouble with his rag-time detachments as if he had been