seemed a maudlin thing to have done and moreover might have given him
an exaggerated idea of my opinion of his art. I took out the picture
and looked at it. It had weathered two years of warfare fairly well.
Then with an indelible pencil I scrawled below it--

"_Sehr gute Bilde. F. Biermeister, 3 Preuss. Gard,_"

a hazy recollection of school-German leading me to believe that "_Sehr
gute Bilde_" meant "Very good picture." Then I pinned it up on the
wall and went in search of Joshua.

"Do you remember that dug-out we used two years ago?" I asked when I
had found him.

"I do," said Joshua. "It was there that I told old Turnips I was
called Joshua after the O.C. Israelites at Jericho."

"That's the place," said I. "It's somewhere round here." And I led him
unostentatiously in the right direction.

"There it is," he cried. "It all comes back to me. Got a flash-lamp?"

He disappeared below and I sat down and waited--waited for sounds of
astonishment and joy from the bowels of the earth. But I waited in
vain. Silence reigned. Then Joshua's head was thrust upwards.

"Biermeister!" he called. "You, Biermeister of the 3rd Prussian Guard,
come away below here! There is one, Sir Joshua Reynolds, an artist,
would have a word with you."