ed that I surely was
preserved for France and was not doomed to die an ignominious or
untimely death behind the front line trenches.

After supper that night I listened to the remarkable story of a man
whose lot was destined to be woven with mine to a degree:--"Aye, laddie,
they came on thick at Mons! There was one time there when there was only
Sandy MacFarlane and mysel' left out o' the whole company, and for two
or three hours we lay behind a wee bank, no higher'n your knee, fighting
them off. Lord how we plugged them! They died like flies! And then puir
Sandy got his, an' there was naething left for me tae do but tae beat an
honorable retreat, an' I grabbed Sandy's rifle an' retired on to the
main body, wi' the bullets buzzin' like bees around me. On my way back I
loaded both rifles as quick as I could and dropped every noo an' again
to let them hae it, and I was carefu' not to waste a damn shot; every
bullet told."

The speaker was Scotty Henderson, late of the Seaforth Highlanders, as
he informed us, and he was relating his experiences during the world
memorable retreat at Mons, when Britain's little regular army,
denominated by His Majesty, Wilhelm II, "The contemptible little English
army," was practically wiped out.

In the cookhouse we listened, open-mouthed, to the wonderful exploits of
this Scotch fighting man. "Were you wounded?" asked Lawrence. "Aye,
laddie, you're damned right I was," and he rolled up his trouser leg and
exhibited a large, broad scar on the inside of his right leg. "There's
where I got it."

"That's a funny looking wound,--looks like a burn," said Lawrence.

"You're damned right it's a burn," said Scotty, "it was the shell that
burned me as it grazed my leg."

The probable reason, I thought, why the shell could graze the inside of
one of his legs without injury to the other was because the fighter was
blessed with a pair of bow-legs that couldn't have stopped the
proverbial pig in the proverbial alley. In addition to this decided
detraction from his manly beauty, he was short, squatty, thick-necked, a
nose of the variety commonly known as a stub, and a couple of little
eyes that had a constant twinkle, half-shrewd and half-humorous, the
whole surmounted with a shock of shaggy red hair. But these detractions
from his beauty did not in the least lessen our admiration for his
personal bravery; he was in our eyes a first-class fighting man; he had
proven it by his work at Mons and had