Go an' look in, I
tell you; an' if ever you sit out here again dreaming like a love-sick
poet, I hope to God it happens to you. You'll deserve it."

With a push like the kick of an elephant's hind leg he propelled the
wretched Reggie in the required direction. Puzzled and surprised, but
feeling very ashamed of himself, he moved cautiously towards the low
mound that stood up dimly outlined against the night sky. Once on the
short journey he crouched motionless while a flare burnt itself out
twenty yards away, only to move forward immediately the darkness
settled again with quickened step. There is no time so good to
movement as the few seconds after the eyes of possible watchers have
been dazzled. . . .

And so he came to the saphead, and cautiously peered in. Under
ordinary circumstances his action was that of a fool; but Shorty had
ordered, and those who knew Shorty got in the habit of carrying out his
instructions. For a while in the blackness he could see nothing. He
noted the sap running back towards the German lines; but at the head of
it there was no sign of life. He carefully stretched farther over, and
as he looked at the bottom of the trench he made out a dark, huddled
figure. Then the next flare went up, and Reginald Simpkins got the
shock of his life.

The green ghostly light came flooding in, and then went out as abruptly
as it had come. But the moment was enough. Clear stamped on his
brain, like a photographic exposure, was the image of two men. One lay
at the bottom of the trench and grinned at the sky with his throat cut
from ear to ear; the other--huddled in a corner with his hand still
clutching a bomb--was even as he looked turning on his head and his
knees, only to subside with a squelch in the mud, kick spasmodically,
and lie still.

"Right in--you take me?--with your clasp knife." Shorty's words came
back to him and he gasped. So this was what his teacher had meant,
when he'd sent him to see the dangers of thinking.

It was just as he was visualising the scene: the sudden ghostly
appearance of Shorty on top of the unsuspecting Germans; the sudden
stroke of that awful weapon; the feeble attempt to get the bomb;
the----well, it was just then that Reggie found himself contemplating
from about six inches range the glaring face of a Prussian N.C.O. who
had suddenly materialised. By the light of a flare down the line he
watched, as he lay on top of the ground, with his head over the e