rest. The boy was not yet twenty, and had only been out seven
months. At Arras he had got a bit of shrapnel in his thigh, which
had played the deuce with the sciatic nerve, and he was still
on crutches.

We spun over ridges of moorland, always keeping northward,
and brought up at a pleasant white-washed house close to the sea.
Colonel Broadbury ushered me into a hall where a small fire of
peats was burning, and on a couch beside it lay a slim, pale-faced
young man. He had dropped his policeman's manner, and behaved
like a gentleman. 'Ted,' he said, 'I've brought a friend home for the
night. I went out to look for a suspect and found a British officer.
This is Captain Blaikie, of the Scots Fusiliers.'

The boy looked at me pleasantly. 'I'm very glad to meet you, sir.
You'll excuse me not getting up, but I've got a game leg.' He was
the copy of his father in features, but dark and sallow where the
other was blond. He had just the same narrow head, and stubborn
mouth, and honest, quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes
dashing regimental officers, and earns V.C.s, and gets done in
wholesale. I was never that kind. I belonged to the school of the
cunning cowards.

In the half-hour before dinner the last wisp of suspicion fled
from my host's mind. For Ted Broadbury and I were immediately
deep in 'shop'. I had met most of his senior officers, and I knew all
about their doings at Arras, for his brigade had been across the
river on my left. We fought the great fight over again, and yarned
about technicalities and slanged the Staff in the way young officers
have, the father throwing in questions that showed how mighty