t
like, people who didn't like us--all seemed to have been paraded
especially for the occasion.

We got home in the end, and it was a great triumph. The only
unenthusiastic person was Mr. Brown, my batman, who surveyed the
things in silence, betokening that he knew quite well he would be
called upon to sew them up in sacking and label them "Officer's Spare
Kit, c/o Cox and Co." Then he looked sadly at my soiled tunic and my
British warm and asked if I had carried them far.

"Over two miles," I replied proudly. "Pity," he said; "there's a whole
dump of them at the bottom of the garden here."

There the matter might have ended if the fat Roley had not lurched
up again the next day with a steel box containing a dial-sight off
a field-gun. The dial-sight was a complicated affair of prisms and
lenses which probably cost the Bosch about sixty pounds, and we felt a
little sick at having overlooked such a find.

"Awful job I had too," he went on. "Some fellows were seen yesterday
taking stuff away and they've put a sentry on the train."

"Serve them right," we said.

Next day we returned to the trucks to try again. The sentry was
engaged in a little conversation, and whilst Chardenal took his
photograph (ostensibly for _The Daily Snap_ as "Sentry Guarding a
Train") I slipped behind the trucks, opened a couple of lids in the
tails of some field-guns, picked out two cases of sights and hurried
off. Chardenal joined me later and, concealing our swag under our
British warms, we walked as quickly as we could until the Brigadier
stopped and had a little chat with us about things in general. And
there we had to stand for a quarter of an hour on a freezing afternoon
with two fingers holding the box and the other fingers holding the
coat down to effect better concealment. Chardenal was in so much pain
and wore such an expression of agonized innocence that the Brigadier
wanted him to come into headquarters until he felt better.

"Well, what have you got?" asked Carfax, another candidate for
demobilisation, when we finally got back and showed him the cases.

"Only two?" he cried, "and you promised _me_ one!" We said things.

"What lenses are they?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Chardenal, "but, whatever's the heaviest kind,
that's the kind we've brought."

And we opened the boxes and they were empty.

The baronial hall will remain unfurnished. I'm fed up with the whole
business.

L.

* * * *