he lay he did not know, but when he opened his eyes it was
almost light, and the face of his wristlet watch had been smashed to
atoms.

For a few seconds he remained quite still, not daring to move from fear
of what movement might tell him, but at last, sitting up, he felt
himself all over and breathed a sigh of deep thankfulness to find that
he had no bones broken.

He remembered that they had been running into an avenue where the trees
met overhead and formed a species of tunnel, and the avenue was still
there before him, one of the poplars headless like poor Captain
Thompson, and showing a great white scar where the shell had caught it.

And then he rose to his feet, to find himself half a dozen yards from
the narrow road, his heart standing still as he saw the mangled chassis
of the motor, entirely stripped of its body works, reared up on one end
at the edge of the crater.

The whole road seemed to have been scooped out to the depth of several
feet, and how he had escaped destruction was little short of miraculous.
The skirt of his own tunic was rent to rags and ribbons, his Sam Browne
belt, map-case, and glasses were gone, and the French general's message
with them, and a great sob shook the lad as he walked slowly to the
ruined car.

The first thing he saw was a human leg swathed to the knee in a stained
puttee, and a stride farther on was the rest of his companion, so
shockingly mutilated that it was only with an effort he could bring
himself to examine it.

"Poor chap, poor chap!" he muttered. "An end like this after eighteen
months at the wheel!"

There was no trace of the captain's body; it was probably buried deep
in the shell hole, or else plastered far and wide over the hillside with
the debris of the motor.

He stooped and opened the chauffeur's coat, which bulged suggestively,
and drew out a little case containing his identification papers and
driver's licence, perhaps also letters from home.

Pulling himself together, he placed the case in one of his own breast
pockets which had escaped injury, with a soldier's "small book" he had
picked up from one of the dead Saxons in their own trench as a memento
to send home to his mother, and then he looked about him, without seeing
sign or trace of living thing or human habitation.

There was a green wheatfield on his right hand, from which the mist was
curling away, and in the glory of the dawn overhead the larks were
trilling. A patch of scarlet po