And to the Somme they went.

They entrained at dawn, loading and lashing vehicles, coaxing horses into trucks, shepherding men, supervising equipment; slid off to the south; travelled endlessly through endless fields, past endless villages; till after three days they made Amiens.

“Now we shan’t be long,” said Gunner Mucksweat, as the last waggon came, groaning to ground, the last team backed into the swingle-trees.

“Dinna believe it, Muckie, we’ll no go into action yet,” warned his “Number Two.”

And Mucksweat’s “Number Two,” the canny Macnab, proved right. Back they marched, and back; through the broad tree-girt avenues of Amiens, where French munitionettes whirling homewards on rickety motor-lorries kissed greetings; over a vast canal below whose embankment silent poilus, blue-cloaked and blue-helmeted, sat glued to enormous fishing-rods; back, along the white and dusty road, to Hangest....

“Told you we’d put you through it, P.J.,” chaffed Pettigrew late that night as—waggons unlimbered, horses tethered, men bivouacked at last—they flung themselves to bed in the lath-and-plaster room of a midden-courted farm.

“Dunno what’s the matter with me,” groused Peter. “Little Willie isn’t used to being anywhere except at the head of the column. He’s been pulling my arms out all this evening. Given me a stitch or something”—he coughed acridly in the darkness—“wonder how long we shall stop here?”

“Oh, about a week, I expect.... Good-night,” snored his companion.