left England. I heard that the Portuguese Jew had escaped--had vanished
from his native heather when they went to get him. They had identified
him as a German professor of Celtic languages, who had held a chair in
a Welsh college--a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright,
high-minded, raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at
all, but he was kept under strict observation. When I asked about his
crossing to France, Macgillivray replied that that was part of their
scheme. I inquired if the visit had given them any clues, but I never
got an answer, for the line had to be cleared at that moment for the
War Office. I hunted up the man who had charge of these Labour visits,
and made friends with him. Gresson, he said, had been a quiet,
well-mannered, and most appreciative guest. He had wept tears on Vimy
Ridge, and--strictly against orders--had made a speech to some troops
he met on the Arras road about how British Labour was remembering the
Army in its prayers and sweating blood to make guns. On the last day he
had had a misadventure, for he got very sick on the road--some kidney
trouble that couldn't stand the jolting of the car--and had to be left
at a village and picked up by the party on its way back. They found him
better, but still shaky. I cross-examined the particular officer in
charge about that halt, and learned that Gresson had been left alone in
a peasant's cottage, for he said he only needed to lie down. The place
was the hamlet of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne.

For several weeks that name stuck in my head. It had a pleasant, quaint
sound, and I wondered how Gresson had spent his hours there. I hunted
it up on the map, and promised myself to have a look at it the next
time we came out to rest. And then I forgot about it till I heard the
name mentioned again.

On 23rd October I had the bad luck, during a tour of my first-line
trenches, to stop a small shell-fragment with my head. It was a close,
misty day and I had taken off my tin hat to wipe my brow when the thing
happened. I got a long, shallow scalp wound which meant nothing but
bled a lot, and, as we were not in for any big move, the M.O. sent me
back to a clearing station to have it seen to. I was three days in the
place and, being perfectly well, had leisure to look about me and
reflect, so that I recall that time as a queer, restful interlude in
the infernal racket of war. I remember yet how on my last night there a
gale made the lamps swing and