st unconsciously, the sergeant's arm.
"There--there! Look!"

Two or three shadowy blobs seemed to move uncertainly above the edge of
the chalk mound and then disappear again; and a moment afterwards, from
almost on top of them, came a hoarse guttural whisper. The officer's
grip tightened convulsively; the night of a sudden seemed alive with
men close to them--pressing around them. Almost involuntarily he got
up and moved back a few steps, still peering, straining to see in the
inky blackness. Something loomed up and bumped into him, only to
recoil with a muttered oath; and even as he realised it was a German he
heard his sergeant's low voice from a few feet away. "Where are you,
sir? Where are you?" The next moment he was back at his side.

"Get back your own way," he whispered; "we've bumped a big patrol.
Don't fire." And as he spoke, with a slight hiss a flare shot up into
the night.

Now had it not been for that one untimely flare this story would never
have been written. Indecent curiosity in other wanderers' doings in No
Man's Land is an unprofitable amusement; while the sound of strafing,
to say nothing of revolver shots, is calculated to produce a tornado of
fire from all directions, administered impartially by friend and foe
alike. Wherefore it is more than likely that but for the sudden
ghostly light both the Englishmen would have got away. As it was, John
Brinton, M.C., Lieutenant in His Majesty's Regiment of the Royal
Loamshires, found himself crouching in a slight dip in the ground and
contemplating from a range of four feet no less than six Huns similarly
engaged. There was the sharp crack of a revolver, a struggle, a
muffled cry; then silence. Half a dozen more flares went up from each
line; everywhere sentries peered earnestly towards the sound of the
shot; a few desultory rifles cracked, and then the night resumed its
whispering mystery. But at the bottom of the dip five Huns lay on the
top of a stunned English officer; while the sixth lay still and
twisted, with a revolver bullet in his brain.

Twenty minutes afterwards the sergeant, crawling warily on his belly,
approached a saphead and after a brief word or two dropped in.

"'Ave you seen Mr. Brinton, sir," he asked anxiously of an officer whom
he found in the sap, pessimistically smoking a cigarette--saps are
pessimistic places.

"No." The officer looked up quickly. "He was out with you, wasn't he,
Sergeant Dawson?"

"Yes, si