At last, Peter Jameson slept.

All through that long afternoon of sunshine, the eighteen-pounders of the Fourth Brigade had been silent. Round the outside lip of the chalk-saucer, attack and counter attack had died in exhaustion. Only, at its extreme left edge, under the shadow of Fosse Eight, in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, kilted men fought out the light, hand to hand, with bomb and bayonet and grenade. In front of Loos, the saviour Cavalry watched the silent woods and the hill whereon death waited.

O’Grady had come back at dusk to report the situation. At nine o’clock, the men sleeping round the guns had been awakened by a vast crackle of rifle-fire far away on the left, by a torrent of white lights spurting up inky skies. This they had watched, as a dog, too tired to bay, watches the moon; watched and slept again—all save the weary sentries peering towards the lonely tree, and the weary signallers in the trench by the telephone.

But Doctor Carson might not sleep. All that afternoon, his red-crossed tilt had lured piteous bandaged men. All that night they came; staggering down the slopes; waiting a while; staggering on with a “Thank yer, doctor” towards Vermelles. The doctor was fifty-five and a specialist; but bending over those piteous men, he did not regret his quiet consulting-room in Harley Street—even though that which he accomplished for them scarcely required as much skill as he had possessed in his medical student days.

He felt a little lonely, there in the shadowed darkness, watching the lights leaping all about him; and when, from the Vermelles road, there came other men, tramping steadily together, he enjoyed the modulated voices which asked him: “I say, this is right for Loos, isn’t it? Thanks so much.”

These voices, when he inquired who they might be, all replied with one word: “Guards”; and tramped on through the night....

Later, there arrived a car, with a Staff officer who inquired for Colonel Stark. Him, the doctor directed to a trench covered with a water-proof sheet: under which, after a moment, showed the light of a candle. The Staff officer with a “Thanks. Feels like rain,” departed: but the candle still shone. And after about an hour, another car arrived, with another Staff officer.

Doctor Carson, seeing blue cigar-smoke curling up against the candle-glow, thought to himself: “Hello. They’ve woken P.J.”

They had; and Peter, note-book in hand, squatted on his chalk-covered valise, peering at two maps; copying little red dots from one to the other. The original map from which Peter copied had been sent from Beuvry; and the last note in his book read “Report to G.O.C. Guards D.A. at Le Rutoire farm eleven a. m.”