rden ... And that face of all my dreams, with the eyes so childlike
and brave and honest, as if they, too, saw beyond the dark to a radiant
country. A line of an old song, which had been a favourite of my
father's, sang itself in my ears:

_There's an eye that ever weeps and a fair face will be fain
When I ride through Annan Water wi' my bonny bands again!_

We were standing by the crumbling rails of what had once been the farm
sheepfold. I looked at Archie and he smiled back at me, for he saw that
my face had changed. Then he turned his eyes to the billowing clouds.

I felt my arm clutched.

'Look there!' said a fierce voice, and his glasses were turned upward.

I looked, and far up in the sky saw a thing like a wedge of wild geese
flying towards us from the enemy's country. I made out the small dots
which composed it, and my glass told me they were planes. But only
Archie's practised eye knew that they were enemy.

'Boche?' I asked.

'Boche,' he said. 'My God, we're for it now.'

My heart had sunk like a stone, but I was fairly cool. I looked at my
watch and saw that it was ten minutes to eleven.

'How many?'

'Five,' said Archie. 'Or there may be six--not more.'

'Listen!' I said. 'Get on to your headquarters. Tell them that it's all
up with us if a single plane gets back. Let them get well over the
line, the deeper in the better, and tell them to send up every machine
they possess and down them all. Tell them it's life or death. Not one
single plane goes back. Quick!'

Archie disappeared, and as he went our anti-aircraft guns broke out.
The formation above opened and zigzagged, but they were too high to be
in much danger. But they were not too high to see that which we must
keep hidden or perish.

The roar of our batteries died down as the invaders passed westward. As
I watched their progress they seemed to be dropping lower. Then they
rose again and a bank of cloud concealed them.

I had a horrid certainty that they must beat us, that some at any rate
would get back. They had seen thin lines and the roads behind us empty
of supports. They would see, as they advanced, the blue columns of the
French coming up from the south-west, and they would return and tell
the enemy that a blow now would open the road to Amiens and the sea. He
had plenty of strength for it, and presently he would have overwhelming
strength. It only needed a spear-point to burst the jerry-built dam and
let the flood through