speak German with a Prussian accent. You are a Boche, I tell you;
and you will breakfast off ball cartridge unless I am very wrong!"

CHAPTER VII

A Friend in Need

Dennis Dashwood laughed aloud, but though there was genuine amusement in
his voice at the beginning, it quickly tailed off into a broken quiver,
for the lad was still suffering from the effect of the shell burst.

"You will laugh on the other side of your mouth directly, if I know
anything," said his captor gravely.

"I am quite content to leave that to the judgment of your officer, my
friend," replied Dennis in French. "But have the goodness not to shake
me like a rat. I've got a splitting headache as it is."

"Ha, you spies speak all languages. _Ma foi!_ What a lot of clever
scoundrels you are!" grunted the Alsatian corporal. "What a pity, for
you have not got a really bad face when one comes to look at it."

"Is it far to your headquarters?" inquired his prisoner wearily.

"Not far, so you had better make the most of it. It will be your last
walk on earth. How beautiful is the song of the lark! The little animals
do not seem to mind the gunfire at all. Do you have larks in Prussia?"

"I hope we shall, my corporal, when you and I get there with our
battalions," but the corporal was impervious to the harmless jest, and
squared his shoulders as they came in sight of his commander's post.

The other man whom Dennis had seen on the slope had come down and joined
them, and the pair marched their prisoner in with a brisk, businesslike
stride.

The French trench ended, or began, whichever way you like to take it, in
a wood of oaks, and the smoke of many fires drifted among the
tree-trunks. At the door of a dug-out a group of officers sat round a
trestle table taking their coffee, and they all looked up as the
corporal cried, "_Halt_, prisoner!" and saluted with his rifle.

"Mon Commandant, I found this man hiding by the roadside behind yonder.
He speaks German and French and all the languages under the sun, and I
am convinced he is a spy."

The commandant was a spare, black-bearded man, whose uniform of horizon
blue gave one rather the impression that it had been made by a
dressmaker, but on the left breast was a little strip of crimson and
green ribbon, showing that he had won the Military Cross during the war.
He had black leggings and narrow black belts, and the wristbands of his
shirt were spotlessly clean.

"What have you to say for y