ed? Some of the married men have got engaged twice. It's a
good thing we're pulling out, or we'd have banns and a bunch of
christenings to look after." "All the same," murmured Claude, "I
like the women of this country, as far as I've seen them." While
they sat smoking in silence, his mind went back to the quiet
scene he had watched on the steps of that other church, on his
first night in France; the country girl in the moonlight, bending
over her sick soldier.

When they walked back across the square, over the crackling
leaves, the dance was breaking up. Oscar was playing "Home, Sweet
Home," for the last waltz.

"Le dernier baiser," said David. "Well, tomorrow we'll be gone,
and the chances are we won't come back this way."

XVIII

"With us it's always a feast or a famine," the men groaned, when
they sat down by the road to munch dry biscuit at noon. They had
covered eighteen miles that morning, and had still seven more to
go. They were ordered to do the twenty-five miles in eight hours.
Nobody had fallen out yet, but some of the boys looked pretty
well wilted. Nifty Jones said he was done for. Sergeant Hicks was
expostulating with the faint-hearted. He knew that if one man
fell out, a dozen would.

"If I can do it, you can. It's worse on a fat man like me. This
is no march to make a fuss about. Why, at Arras I talked with a
little Tommy from one of those Pal Battalions that got
slaughtered on the Somme. His battalion marched twenty-five miles
in six hours, in the heat of July, into certain death. They were
all kids out of school, not a man of them over five-foot-three,
called them the 'Bantams.' You've got to hand it to them,
fellows."

"I'll hand anything to anybody, but I can't go no farther on
these," Jones muttered, nursing his sore feet.

"Oh, you! We're going to heave you onto the only horse in the
Company. The officers, they can walk!"

When they got into Battalion lines there was food ready for them,
but very few wanted it. They drank and lay down in the bushes.
Claude went at once to Headquarters and found Barclay Owens, of
the Engineers, with the Colonel, who was smoking and studying his
maps as usual.

"Glad to see you, Wheeler. Your men ought to be in good shape,
after a week's rest. Let them sleep now. We've got to move out of
here before midnight, to relieve two Texas battalions at Moltke
trench. They've taken the trench with heavy casualties and are
beat out; couldn't hold it in case