d 'Rabbits'
for him. You remember 'Rabbits,' sir?--nice-looking horse, but inclined
to stumble. All bays now, and not a better-looking telephone team in
France."

And then an anxious moment. Nearest the wall in the shed which
sheltered the officers' horses stood my own horse--dear old Silvertail,
always a gentleman among horses, but marked in his likes and dislikes.
Would he know me after my six months' absence? The grey ears went back
as I approached, but my voice seemed to awake recognition. Before long
a silver-grey nose was nozzling in the old confiding way from the
fourth button towards the jacket pocket where the biscuits used to be
kept. All was well with the world.

A rataplan on a side-drum feebly played in the street outside!--the
village crier announcing that a calf had committed hari-kari on one of
the flag-poles put up to warn horsemen that they mustn't take short
cuts over sown land. The aged crier, in the brown velveteen and the
stained white corduroys, took a fresh breath and went on to warn the
half-dozen villagers who had come to their doorways that uprooting the
red flags would be in defiance of the express orders of Monsieur le
Maire (who owned many fields in the neighbourhood). The veal resulting
from the accident would be shared out among the villagers that evening.

My camp-bed was put up in a room occupied by the adjutant; and during
and after dinner there was much talk about the programme of intensive
training with which the Brigade was going to occupy itself while out at
rest. For the morrow the colonel had arranged a scheme--defence and
counter-attack--which meant that skeleton batteries would have to be
brought up to upset and demolish the remorseless plans of an imaginary
German host; and there was diligent studying of F.A.T. and the latest
pamphlets on Battery Staff Training, and other points of knowledge
rusted by too much trench warfare.

It was exactly 2 P.M. on the morrow. We were mounted and moving off to
participate in this theoretical battle, when the "chug-chug-chug" of a
motor-cycle caused us to look towards the hill at the end of the
village street: a despatch-rider, wearing the blue-and-white band of
the Signal Service. The envelope he drew from his leather wallet was
marked "urgent."

"It's real war, gentlemen," said the colonel quietly, having read the
contents; "we move at once. Corps say that the enemy are massing for an
attack."

Then he gave quick, very definite ord