was blinking into a pair of
field-glasses: and I was lying flat upon my back, neither smoking nor
sleeping, but gradually losing consciousness with a cigarette in my
hand.

I had come to the point of postponing through sheer lethargy the
onerous duty of lifting the cigarette to my lips, when, with an oath
that ripped the air, Jonah started to his feet.

Sleep went flying.

I sat up amazedly, propping myself on my hands....

With dropped jaw, my cousin was staring through the glasses as a man
who is looking upon sudden death. While I watched, he lowered them,
peered into the distance, clapped them again to his eyes, let them
fall, glanced swiftly to right and left, shut his mouth with a snap,
and made a dash for the cars....

With his hand upon Ping's door, he turned and pointed a trembling
forefinger along the valley.

"There's Zed," he cried. "My horse. Haven't seen him since Cambrai.
Leading a team, and they're flogging him."

I fancy he knew I should join him, for he never closed Ping's door. As
he changed into second, I swung myself inboard. A moment later we were
flying along the dusty road....

Zed had been Jonah's charger for over three years. Together, for month
after month, the two had endured the rough and revelled in the smooth.
They had shared misery, and they had shared ease. Together, many
times, they had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And,
while the animal must have loved Jonah, my cousin was devoted to the
horse. At last came Cambrai....

Jonah was shot through the knee and sent to England. And Zed--poor Zed
disappeared.

My cousin's efforts to trace him were superhuman. Unhappily his groom
had been killed, when Jonah was wounded, and, though all manner of
authorities, from the Director of Remounts downwards, had lent their
official aid, though a most particular description had been circulated
and special instructions issued to all the depots through which the
horse might pass, to his lasting grief Jonah had never heard of Zed
again.

And now.... I found myself praying that he had not been mistaken.

Jonah was driving like a man possessed.

We tore up a rise, whipped round a bend and, coming suddenly upon a
road on our right, passed it with locked wheels.

The noise my cousin made, as he changed into reverse, showed that his
love for Zed was overwhelming.

We shot backward, stopped, stormed to the right and streaked up a
shocking road at forty-five....