s of war cages. "I saw one lot come down," a D.A.C. officer
told me. "All that the sentry had to do was to point to the cage with a
'This-way-in' gesture, and in they marched."

One wee cloud blurred the high-spirited light-heartedness of those
days. We lost "Ernest," who had marched forward with us and been our
pet since Sept. 6th. The colonel and Hubbard took him up the line; the
little fellow didn't seem anxious to leave me that morning, but I
thought that a run would do him good, and he had followed the colonel a
couple of days before. "I'm sorry, but we've lost 'Ernest,'" was the
colonel's bluntly told news when he returned. "He disappeared when I
was calling on B Battery.... They said he went over the hill with an
infantry officer, who had made much of him.... It's curious, because he
stuck to us when I went to see the infantry at Brigade Headquarters,
although every one in their very long dug-out fussed over him."

There was poor chance of the dog finding his way back to us in that
country of many tracks, amid the coming to and fro of thousands of all
kinds of troops. We never saw or heard of him again. The loss of him
dispirited all of us a bit; and I suppose I felt it more than most: he
had been a splendid little companion for nearly a month.

The adjutant and Wilde returned from leave on Oct. 3rd, full of the
bright times to be spent in London. "People in England think the war's
all over. They don't realise that pursuing the Boche means fighting
him as well," burst forth the adjutant. "By Gad," he went on, "we had a
narrow escape the day we went on leave. I never saw anything like it in
my life. You remember the factory at Moislains, near the place where we
were out for three or four days at the beginning of last month. Well,
Wilde and I caught a leave bus that went that way on the road to
Amiens. The bus had to pull up about five hundred yards short of the
factory, because there was a lot of infantry in front of us.... And
just at that moment a Boche mine blew up.... Made an awful mess....
About eleven men killed.... We had taken the place three weeks before,
and the mine had remained undiscovered all that time.... We must all of
us have passed over that spot many times. You remember they made a Red
Cross Station of the factory.... A most extraordinary thing!"

The Boche fire had died away almost entirely; it was manifest that the
Brigade would have to move forward. I could go on leave now that the
adjutan