A long hospital train was waiting in a siding for the next convoy of motor ambulances which should arrive from the various dressing-stations.

The little village, not much knocked about by shell-fire, was occupied by a reserve brigade, and as the cap crossed the rails Martique shut off his engines.

"I thought so," he said, getting out and looking at one of his back tyres, "we punctured half a mile back on the road, and I must put on a spare wheel. She wants some water too, and an oil up, so I am afraid you will have to cool your heels for the next quarter of an hour. No," he added, as Dennis prepared to help him, "I do all my own repairs—much rather. Thanks, yes, I will have a cigarette," and Martique slipped off his coat.

It was good to be back among his own people once more, and with a smile of immense satisfaction on his face Dennis strolled along the little street, taking everything in.

There were Army Service Corps motor wagons on supply, and an infantry platoon came swinging round the corner, looking very bronzed and fit. From their black buttons he saw that they belonged to a rifle battalion in the reserve.

An orderly was holding horses outside a dirty little estaminet, and, riding his machine on the cobbled sidewalk, a motor dispatch-rider threaded his way with marvellous skill among the little groups of villagers and fatigue parties.

Where a lane crossed the street at right angles he saw the white line of a trench close to the backs of the houses, and walked towards it.

At the corner of the trench a Red Cross nurse was in the act of posting a letter in the field collection box. There were nurses from the waiting ambulance train among the crowd in the street.

After a long gaze over the country beyond the trench he returned to retrace his steps, when something in the attitude of the nurse at the pillar-box attracted his attention. Her back was towards him, and she was peering round the angle in a furtive kind of way.

He stood still, and then he noticed that the door of the collecting box was open, and that while she peered along the deserted trench she was gathering the letters and dropping them into a receptacle beneath her white apron.

"I didn't know they had women letter carriers out here," thought Dennis; "possibly they take them down on the hospital train for quickness' sake—and yet——"

An indefinable suspicion followed on the heels of his surmise as the girl turned her head, and in an instant he recognised the red hair and dark eyes of the waitress in the London restaurant.

The rumble of the motor lorries at the cross-roads deadened the noise of his approach as he came softly up behind her, and then his suspicions were confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt.

"Got you at last, Frau von Dussel!" he exclaimed, seizing her arm; and with a low cry she dropped a bunch of letters on to the ground, thrust her hand into the breast of her apron, and drew out a Browning pistol.

But he was too quick for her, and his fingers closed like a vice on her wrist.

"Brute, you are hurting me!" she wailed.

"Not half so much as you have hurt some people I could mention!" he retorted hotly. "You are my prisoner, you vixen!"

For a moment the big dark eyes blazed unutterable hatred, and then she laughed aloud.

The unrestrained laugh of a German woman is the index to the German character. It is one of the most horribly unmusical sounds on earth.

"You shall never take me alive!" she hissed.

"And there I beg to differ; I have taken you, though how long you will remain alive will rest with the higher powers."

He kicked the Browning which she had dropped aside with his foot, and for an instant she struggled with a violence that surprised him, giving vent to a piercing shriek which brought several soldiers running to the spot. Among them was one of the Military Police.

"Your handcuffs, my man!" said Dennis, "this is one of the most dangerous German spies at large. I accept all responsibility for my action, but I am going to take her to our Brigade Headquarters for further identification."

A Red Cross nurse is a very sacred personality to the British soldier, but Dennis's voice carried conviction with it, although the artful jade made a bold bid for liberty.

She ceased her struggles and said in a plaintive tone without a trace of foreign accent, "It is a wicked mistake. I am a Welsh woman, and my name is Margaret Jones. The Sister on the train will bear witness for me."

"I have yet to learn," said Dennis, fully aware of the renewed look of doubt in the faces of the men, "that a Red Cross nurse has any right to pilfer a field letter-box, or that she usually carries a Browning pistol for that purpose. Besides——" And at a venture he suddenly transferred his grip from her left wrist to the nurse's headgear she wore.

"There you are!" he said, sternly triumphant, as the splendidly made red wig came away and revealed the black hair beneath it. "Those handcuffs!" And they closed with a snap on the wrists of the German spy.

Martique was sounding his horn as a signal that he was ready, but he was not prepared for the sight that greeted his eyes as Dennis and the M.P. came up to the car with their prisoner.

"You might give me a bit of a chit, sir, to show it's all right," said the policeman, when they had lifted her into the front seat, pale and rigid now. "And if you take my advice," he whispered, "you'll keep an eye on her; she can wriggle like an eel, and if she grabs the steering-wheel when you're moving, she'll break all your bloomin' necks for you."

"I'll watch it," said Dennis with a smile.

* * * * *

In the telephone dug-out at Brigade Headquarters a man was speaking into the receiver, and the man at the other end of the wire out in a certain sector of the firing line smiled as he recognised the voice.

"That's you, Pater, isn't it?" said Bob.

"Yes," replied Brigadier-General Dashwood. "Any news yet?"

"None at all, sir," said Bob, his face changing; "the balloon's been found pretty well riddled, with the observer dead in the basket. The Highlanders took the wood this morning, you know, but there's no sign of Dennis. We can only hope for the best, Pater, and that is, that he is a prisoner. Eh? What did you say?—I can't hear you—are you there?"

"Hold the wire a moment," came the response, delivered in a startled voice; and Bob Dashwood sighed as he rested his elbow on his knee and looked about him at the appalling destruction of the place.

The Great Push was still continuing without a check, and the Reedshires had again made good with the other regiments of the Brigade.

Somebody came up to him for orders, and he gave them, and somebody else arrived with a request for his presence in another part of the new position.

"You must wait a moment; I am talking to the Brigadier," he said, and then feeling the pause had been a long one, he turned to the receiver again.

"Hallo! Hallo! Are you there, Pater?" he queried, and the reply that reached his ear was a startling one.

"Yes, I'm here, and who do you think is here too? The cat with nine lives has turned up again, and, by Jupiter! Bob, he's brought another cat with him. Dennis is with me without a scratch, and he's captured Ottilie von Dussel, red-haired and red-handed!"

"Oh, good egg!" shouted Major Dashwood, commanding the 2/12th Battalion of the Royal Reedshire Regiment. "Where did he find her? How did he do it?"

"Gently, my dear Robert," said the Brigadier; "he will be with you in a couple of hours, and then he'll tell you the whole thing."



CHAPTER XXX

Under the Enemy Wall

With the coming of dusk came Dennis Dashwood back to the old battalion, just at roll-call. The last quarter of a mile he performed at the double, and burst into the fire-trench like a bolt from the blue.

When his brother officers shook hands with him—for all were delighted at his return—an irresistible murmur of welcome rippled along A Company, and as Hawke's name was called at the moment, that worthy replied with a ringing yell.

"Report yourself at office to-morrow," said the lieutenant in charge of No. 2 Platoon, and Harry Hawke so far forgot himself as to answer, "Right-o, Governor!" at the same time lifting his trench helmet on to the point of his bayonet and waving it frantically.

An enemy sniper promptly sent it spinning on to the top of the parados.

"You shall do four days' field punishment, Hawke!" said the outraged officer.

"Forty days if you like, sir—I don't care what becomes of me. 'Ere's Mr. Dashwood back agin—that's good enough!"

No. 2 Platoon, carried away by the infectious enthusiasm, joined in the shout.

"Another word," cried the lieutenant, "and No. 2 Platoon shall go back into the reserve!" And amid the dead silence that followed that awful threat, Dennis reached them, lifting a warning finger.

"Steady, men," he said. "Thank you for the welcome, but it's not done in the best platoons, you know. How are you, Littlewood?"

"Top-hole, old chap! Where have you been, you beggar? You've managed to completely demoralise the company."

"You shall have a narrative of my expedition all highly coloured, by and by," laughed Dennis. "I've had no end of a time, and I've brought back the news that we've got the Prussians in front of us by way of a change."

"The dickens we have!" said Littlewood. "Any chance of their counter-attacking?"

"That's the idea, old man. I'm going on listening-post to-night, and I shouldn't wonder if we get it pretty hot. Bob tells me you've had it in the neck whilst I've been away."

"By Jove, yes!" said Littlewood gravely, "seventy-five casualties last night. Spencer's gone, young Fitzhugh, Blennerhasset, and Bowles, all killed. There wasn't enough of Bowles left to bury even—nothing but one boot with a foot in it—high explosive, you know, and he was only married two days before he came out!"

"Rotten hard lines!" said Dennis, passing along the front of the platoon, and stopping before Harry Hawke.

"You and Tiddler are 'for it' to-night, remember," he said, and the two men grinned delightedly. "Ah, Wetherby! Going strong?"

"A1," replied the boy, as the parade was dismissed, "but I say, we've got beastly quarters this time. Look here," and he pointed to a mere dint in the side of the trench with a piece of sacking by way of protection from the vulgar gaze.

"Hum! we'll alter that to-morrow—it's certainly not palatial," said Dennis. "I suppose there's none of my clobber come up?"

"Oh yes, it's all here; I saw to that," said young Wetherby, blushing like a girl, as he pointed to a haversack and a brown valise which contained his friend's campaigning kit.

"What a good little chap you are!" exclaimed Dennis.

"Not at all. I fagged for you at Harrow, and somehow I had the idea you'd turn up," and young Wetherby blushed again.

He was a pretty pink-faced boy, who wrote extremely sweet poetry in his odd moments.

"Well, I'm going to have a shave," said Dennis; "and I say, Wetherby, you might grope in the kit-bag and put a refill in that spare torch of mine. I've got an idea it may be useful to-night. Oh, hang this rain!"

The steady drizzle which had set in as the light faded had turned to a heavy, pitiless downpour.

"What a night!" murmured Harry Hawke, as he lay on his stomach in two inches of water some twenty yards in front of the trench with his pal, Tiddler, beside him. "An' me on the peg to-morrer!"

"Bet you there won't be no show," said Tiddler.

"Don't you make too sure of that, Cocky. I'll put a shilling on Mr. Dashwood both ways, and he's got a notion that something's up."

They both looked round, as a slim figure in a thin mackintosh crawled up alongside.

"Hear anything, Hawke?" said Dennis.

"Not so far, sir, but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night—the rain makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the shell 'oles a fair knock-art."

"Well now, look here," said Dennis impressively, "I'm going to shove along, and I want you both to listen with your eyes. You know the Morse code, and if you see anything straight in front of you, pass the word back to Mr. Wetherby on the parapet behind."

"But you ain't goin' alone, sir! You'll let one of us come wiv yer!"

"I am going alone, Hawke. I marked the lie of the ground before the light went, and it's as easy as walking down Piccadilly. If I can't find out what I want I shall come back; anyhow, look and listen!" And he glided off into the rain and was lost to view long before the slither of his footsteps had died away.

Two hundred yards separated friend and foe; two hundred yards of pulverised No Man's Land, now soaked like a sponge. About midway stretched an unfinished German trench, from which our guns had driven the enemy before they had had time to complete it. It was little more than a wet shallow ditch now, with a line of sandbags on the British side, and when Dennis had crossed it he continued his perilous course on hands and knees.

It was a zigzag course to avoid the thirty or forty shell holes that our guns had made, and as he wormed himself forward the darkness of the night and the strange silence of the enemy batteries on that sector confirmed him more than ever in his conviction that something was in preparation.

The trench he was approaching was of quite unusual strength, with a formidable redoubt making a salient in one place, and as he reached the foot of it he knew that a wall of sandbags nearly fifteen feet high towered above his head.

He had seen that before the light went. Now, in the pitchy darkness of the drenching rain, as he crouched at the foot of the wall he could hear the hoarse murmur of many voices behind it, as it seemed to him.

He looked back across that dreary No Man's Land, and then again at the barrier in front of him, and, carrying his life in his hand as he well knew, began to worm his way up the face of the sandbags.

The actual climb presented little difficulty to an athlete; the danger was if a rocket should soar into the sky and some sharp eye discover him.

But the desire to learn something of the enemy's movements from their conversation deadened all sense of risk, until he had reached the last row of sandbags but one, when, without any warning, a group of heads popped up over the parapet, and five officers with night glasses examined the British line.

He could have reached out and taken the first one by the collar, so close was he, and clinging there, ready to drop and bolt for it, he listened with all his ears.

Secure from all eavesdropping—for who would venture across that No Man's Land on such a night?—the five men talked freely, with all the blatant self-assumption of Prussian sabre rattlers, and the wet wind that brought their words to him brought also the smell of their cigars.

But if the listener's pulse quickened at their conversation, his heart beat faster still at the conclusion of it.

"By the way, Von Dussel," said one of them, "how comes it that you are going in with us to-night? Surely you are not abandoning the role that you have filled with such success?" And Dennis recognised the short laugh that preluded the reply.

"Not at all, Herr Colonel," said the nearest of the five, "but I have had no word to-day from my wife, so I know it is of no use penetrating their lines. Besides, I have an old grudge against the regiment in front of us—a quarrel I hope to settle to-night."

"You may rest quite easy that you will do so," laughed the colonel; "our five battalions of Prussians are going to do what their Bavarian and Saxon comrades failed to accomplish. Let me see, it is General Dashwood's Brigade that is before us here, nicht wahr?"

"Yes," chortled Von Dussel; "and it is with the Dashwood family that I hope to renew an interrupted acquaintance, the pig hounds!"

Dennis had never found it necessary to place such a powerful restraint upon himself as he did at that moment, and it was perhaps a lucky thing that the five men withdrew as the spy spoke.

His own clutch on the sandbags had been gradually relaxing, and his feet were so cramped that he regained the ground with difficulty.

For several seconds he paused irresolute, figuring out how long it would take him to crawl back to the British trench, and then, suddenly coming to a very hazardous decision, he sat down on his heels with his back against the German sandbags.

Spreading the skirt of his saturated mackintosh over his knees, and holding the Orilux torch which young Wetherby had recharged for him between his ankles, he breathed a silent prayer to Heaven, and pressed the button.

Before he had started he had pasted a strip of paper over the electric bulb to reduce the light, leaving only a tiny aperture in the centre of it.

But the two men on listening-post in the distance caught the gleam distinctly, and read off the Morse code message in whispered chorus without a mistake.

"Wetherby," twinkled the tiny speck from the foot of the enemy trench, "find Bob at once, and tell him that five Prussian battalions will attack in half an hour. They are to form up on this side of the line of sandbags midway between us, and the signal for their advance will be the turning on of their searchlights. If he'll move our chaps forward to your side of the sandbags and lie doggo, the brutes will get the surprise of their lives, for they're cocksure of a walk-over. Tell Bob they're attacking with emptied magazines, and it will be bayonet work—that'll fetch him."

The listening-post waited eagerly for more, but the Orilux did not show again, and when Hawke crawled back to find Mr. Wetherby, his heart sank into his muddy boots, for the officer boy was not there.

Meanwhile Dennis had gathered himself together for the return journey.

It seemed an hour since the voices above him had ceased, and a thousand wild doubts chased one another through his brain, but he had not left the shelter of the wall three yards when he glided back to it again, and wormed himself into a crevice at its base.

Earth had come dribbling from the top of the parapet, and following the earth panting men scrambling down the sandbags until they reached the ground. One trod upon his shoulder as he lay there, but the lad never moved, and whispered words all about him told that the enemy was mustering for the assault.

At the end of a few minutes the soft squelch of heavy boots died away in the direction of the British line, and Dennis Dashwood swallowed rapidly and felt sick. He could not see his hand in front of him, and the rain continued to hiss without cessation, falling into a neighbouring shell hole with an ever-increasing plop.

Had they seen his signal and understood it? was his agonised thought, as eight powerful searchlights were suddenly turned on to the ground in front.

Everything was now as light as day, and he saw the Prussian battalions lying on their faces, packed like sardines in a tin, behind those sandbags that concealed them from his own people.

The iron plates on their boot soles gleamed like silver, and not a man of them moved. Then, without warning, a hurricane of German shells plumped into the trench where he had left his beloved battalion, raking it from end to end.

No need for those waiting bayonets now, was his soul-rending thought, as he saw the trench disappear in a holocaust of flame and smoke. He had acted for the best, but he ought to have gone back with his news, for, if the battalion was where he had left it, then the 2/12th Royal Reedshires must have been wiped off the face of the earth!



CHAPTER XXXI

With Dashwood's Brigade

High overhead three red rockets burst in the sky, and the German guns ceased at the signal.

In the dazzling gleam of the concentrated searchlights, Dennis saw a Prussian officer raise himself cautiously to peer across the sandbags, and reconnoitre the obliterated British trench.

His eyes reached the edge of the parapet, but no farther, and in the white figure that leapt up into view and shot him dead, Dennis recognised young Wetherby.

Like magic the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians with the bayonet.

Taken completely by surprise, the first line of lying-down men died practically on its knees, and before the second line could press a trigger the battalion was into them.

There was no quarter asked or given. The Reedshires were out to kill, and they killed. In the black shadow of the German redoubt Dennis Dashwood watched one of the finest fights of the war, every fibre of his being itching to be in it. But between him and that raving, raging tumult stretched the tightly packed files of the enemy, thrown into panic-stricken confusion by the unexpectedness of the attack, and after a mad few minutes, in spite of the efforts of their officers to hold them up, the vaunted Prussians broke and streamed back to the protection of the strong trench.

In a flash of time Dennis saw many things: the slanting rain on our helmets, the wisp of fog that rolled lazily between him and that Homeric combat. He recognised his brother, half a head taller than anybody else, thrusting and hewing like a hero of old, and Littlewood working a Lewis gun on the top of the sandbags, the shots just clearing our own fellows' heads.

From an embrasure in the angle of the salient above him the hateful hammering of a German machine-gun began. The brutes were playing into the melee, regardless of their own men, in a frantic endeavour to stop the Reedshires' rush, and as A Company recoiled before that stream of bullets, Dennis drew his revolver.

Already one of the Prussian battalions had swarmed over into their own trench, paying no heed to the solitary figure in the black shadow as they passed him, and, marking the position of the gun, Dennis scrambled up in their wake with the agility of a cat, and darted into the gun emplacement single-handed, just as young Wetherby and Hawke saw him and gave a shout of recognition.

The Germans were chained to the piece, and as he shot the last man of the gun crew, his brother officer overtook him.

At his heels A Company had arrived with a heartening roar, and jumped down on to the crowded mass in the trench below them, a perfect forest of arms going up as the demoralised runaways bellowed for mercy.

"Bravo, Hawke! Go it, boys!" shouted Dennis, almost overturning Wetherby.

"My hat!" exclaimed the boy, as they gripped each other to save falling into the tightly packed trench below them, "that was no end of a stunt of yours. If we hadn't shifted forward we should have been killed to a man. Hadn't left our position five minutes before their shells found us!"

"And I never knew you'd moved," said Dennis. "Look at those chaps bolting into that dug-out there! Give 'em a couple of bombs!"

Young Wetherby hurled two Mills grenades into an opening in the wall of the German parados, and the double explosion was followed by a chorus of piercing screams. As for the trench, it was piled up with bodies five and six deep, for the Prussians were sturdy men and fought like wild cats.

But already the Highland battalion on the Reedshires' left had come up. Other battalions away to the east were making good, and the brigade was carrying all before it.

"Forward!" rang the whistles, and, leaving the supports to consolidate, the leading battalions cleared the parados and pushed on.

It was a wild flounder over the sodden ground, three hundred yards of it, with shell-holes where the rain took you up to your armpits, but the Reedshires had tasted the glories of conquest, and there was no holding them back, if, indeed, anyone had wished to do so.

"Next stop, Berlin!" yelled Harry Hawke, tripping up as the words left his mouth, and sliding twice his own length to the edge of a crump-hole, into which another inch would have plunged him head foremost.

"Stick it, Den!" shouted a voice in his ear, and he saw that it was his brother Bob, a red smear on his cheek and a light in his eyes Dennis had only seen there on the football field.

"Come on, old chap!" yelled the C.O., "every fifty yards is worth a monarch's ransom to Haig. Let's see if we can't carry that wood yonder while their searchlights last"; and he pointed to the ridge beyond the captured trench. "I'd like to know who silenced that machine-gun just now. I suppose half a dozen men will claim it to-morrow, while the real chap may be dead."

"Oh no, he isn't," laughed a voice.

"Shut your head, young Wetherby, unless you want it punched!" was Dennis's angry retort, but his fellow subaltern only laughed the louder.

"It was Dennis," said the boy; "he went in alone and shot the whole lot, Major!"

Bob Dashwood opened his lips to speak, but made a mental note instead, for the searchlights had been suddenly withdrawn, and were now concentrated in one blinding blaze about fifty yards in front of the charging brigade.

The German gunners also had shortened their fuses, transferring their barrage to the spot, where they poured in a hail of shells through which no man might try to pass and live.

"Halt there—hang you—halt!" roared the Major commanding; "don't you see we've reached our limit for to-night?"

The whistles shrilled amid the red and yellow shell bursts, and the victory-maddened men, realising the impossible, even before the word reached them, pulled up and looked to their right.

"Dig in—dig in!" shouted somebody.

"No, fall back, you fools!" bellowed a stentorian sergeant, and, checked in full career, they fell back by companies in any sort of order under a rain of shrapnel.

Bob and his brother, still side by side, were retiring after them at a brisk walk, when a man of Dennis's section passed them at the double, going in the direction of the redoubt which they had carried, and they saw him run up alongside Hawke, who was a few yards ahead of them.

The crash of the shells in their rear drowned Hawke's exclamation, but they saw him stop and turn, look under his hand at the barrage, and dart back towards it like a hare.

"Hawke, stop! Are you mad?" cried Bob, making a grab at him as he went by, but Hawke's face was white and set, and he paid no heed as they watched him curiously.

"I know!" shouted Dennis in his brother's ear, "his chum's hit. Look at that, Bob—there's devotion for you! Those two fellows are the greatest toughs in the regiment, and they're inseparables."

They saw the little Cockney private fling himself down on his knees beside a fallen man, tear with both hands at the front of his tunic, and then fling his arms up above his head with a tragic gesture of despair. Then he slung his rifle, and, stooping again, dragged the figure up, hoisted him across his shoulder, and came staggering back under the heavy load, the heroic group telling blackly out against the searchlights' white glare.

A shell burst thirty feet way, but the little Cockney came doggedly on, and they waited for him, even retracing their steps to meet him.

"What's up, Hawke?" shouted Dennis; "do you want us to give you a hand?" And he was about to add something else, but the look of piteous entreaty in Hawke's eyes checked the words.

"I'd rather take him in myself, sir," he said hoarsely; "it's true what they says in the papers abart making a man a new face in the 'orspitals, ain't it? They'll be able to patch 'im up, don't you think, sir?"

Dennis and Bob exchanged a look, for the savage earnestness hit them both hard from its very hopelessness.

Tiddler's visage was nothing but a hideous pulp.

And they knew in a moment that poor Tiddler had already passed beyond all human aid; Major Dashwood made another mental note, to be placed upon official record later on—if he himself should be spared!

At the mouth of a communication Hawke paused to readjust his burden. The limp figure was somehow slipping from his grasp, and, seeing at last, he realised that his errand had been in vain.

As he stood looking down at the crumpled thing that a few minutes before had been a living, moving part of the great war machine, Dennis laid a hand on his shoulder.

"He was a good plucked 'un, Hawke, and you did your best for him," said Dennis; "now you've got to keep a stiff upper lip."

"Yus, I know, sir," was the husky reply, as something rolled glistening down the dirty cheek. "'Im and me 'listed the same day, and Tiddler was the only pal I ever 'ad."

He turned a fierce and flashing eye towards the enemy barrage; an eye that positively flamed vengeance to come, and then he pointed with his hand.

"See that, sir?" he cried hoarsely, "ain't that Mr. Wetherby?"

A long way out across the wet slope, where the raging Reedshires had taken heavy toll of the flying foe before the German gunners had drawn that barrier of fire across the way, a figure was crawling back towards them, dragging one useless leg behind him.

A very wicked piece of shrapnel had carried young Wetherby's knee-pan away, and, lodging in the joint, gave the sufferer excruciating agony every time he knocked it. More than once he almost fainted, and each time the wounded knee jarred against the rough ground young Wetherby groaned through his clenched teeth.

"Why don't the stretcher bearers come out?" he moaned.

He could see the strong enemy trench from which they had made their final advance, and knew by the bustle there that active preparations were being made to hold it should the Prussians counter-attack again, which was not unlikely.

The enemy searchlights still concentrated upon it, and the barrage never ceased to boom and burst behind him with useless expenditure of shells which had already served their object.

No doubt behind that barrage the discomfited Prussian battalions were being reorganised, but young Wetherby had no thought of them, all his energies were directed to getting in as soon as possible that the doctor might ease his pain.

An unusually heavy burst of shrapnel cut up the ground round about him as he gained the crest of a bank, where three dead men lay piled one on top of the other, and, taking advantage of that gruesome cover, a Prussian officer was crouching on his face. Wetherby paused a moment as he came alongside him.

"Have you any water in your bottle, Kamerad?" said the man in excellent English.

"Yes, here you are," replied the boy, unshipping it and handing it to him; "are you badly hurt?"

The Prussian emptied the bottle before he made answer. "Both legs broken," he said; "might be worse, might be better."

The man's cynical laugh jarred on young Wetherby's finer feelings, shaken as he was by the acute agony he was suffering, and he dragged himself on again, the cold sweat standing in great beads on his forehead.

He had scarcely placed twice his own length between himself and the Prussian officer when the brute, who was shamming wounded all the time, levelled his revolver at the tortured boy, and lodged two blunt-nosed bullets in his back!

"Great Scott! Did you see that?" shouted Dennis.

"Yus, not 'arf!" And he and Hawke jumped off the mark together, racing neck and neck out into the open, heedless of a withering fire from some machine-guns that began to play on the slope.

The German cowered flat as a pancake, his head turned sideways, watching them as they came.

"Had they seen?" he thought, "or was this some senseless freak of those mad-brained English?"

The next moment any doubt in his mind vanished, all the blood left the scoundrel's face, and, starting to his knees, he covered the foremost figure with his weapon. Twice he raised it, staring hard, and a feeling as of an electric shock passed through Dennis Dashwood as the pair recognised each other.

Then they fired their revolvers simultaneously, but the cylinders of both were empty, and into the livid face of Von Dussel there came an extraordinary look of mingled doubt and terror.

"But you are dead!" he gasped, as the memory of the mined brewery came back to him.

"Not the first mistake you have made, you infernal scoundrel!" shouted Dennis; and clubbing his revolver, he smote him fair and square between the eyes, dropping the spy like a stone.

"Stop, Hawke, I want that man alive!" panted the avenger, "he's got enough to go on with"; and, checking the remorseless bayonet with which Hawke was about to run him through, Dennis turned and knelt beside the body of his chum.

Little Wetherby was lying on his side, but his eyes brightened as he saw who it was.

"Go back, Dashwood," said the boy, speaking with difficulty, "it's no use, I'm done."

"Nonsense, old chap; we're going to get you in between us," said Dennis. "Hawke and I can carry you."

"No, no—do go back, there's a dear fellow," gurgled the boy, a rush of blood from his lungs almost choking him. "But I say, Dashwood, there is one thing you might do for me. You'll find a writing pad in my kit-bag, the Mater would like to have it."

"She shall, Wetherby. But let's have a look at you, and see if we can stop the haemorrhage before we pick you up. Where did that fiend get you?"

"Through the heart," replied the dying boy. "Please let me lie here, and tell the Mater I don't regret it, except for her sake; say that I wouldn't have missed this for anything. I've only known what it was to live since I came out here!" And then, with his hand clasped in his friend's hand, Cuthbert Wetherby knew what it was to die, and passed into the great beyond with a fearless smile on his young lips.

Dennis had seen so many men "go out" in the few brief weeks of his fighting that he had deemed himself case-hardened against anything, but now he had to look away, a little ashamed that Hawke should see the spasm that came into his face.

"You are not the only one that's lost a pal to-night, Hawke," he said in a choking voice; "now give me a hand with this Prussian hog."

As Hawke jumped up with alacrity he gave a yell of positive anguish. "Why didn't you let me tickle 'im in the ribs, sir? He's gone!" he howled.



CHAPTER XXXII

The Rewards of Valour

Von Dussel's head must have been as hard as his black heart, for he had recovered his senses at the moment Wetherby died, and a mighty gust of passion swept over Dennis Dashwood's soul.

"He can't be far off, and I'll find him if I die for it. Get you back to cover, Hawke."

"Is it likely?" cried his companion, giving vent to his overcharged feelings by a very ugly laugh, which changed into a howl of delight as a bullet grazed the tip of his ear. "There he is, sir, hiding in that there crater!—and he's some shot too—look out!"

Von Dussel, armed with a rifle—there were scores lying about littering the ground—lodged his second bullet in the leather case that held Dennis's field glasses, and, instantly dividing, the two ran a zigzag course towards the crater as they saw his head dodging down.

It was not twenty yards away, but as they reached it, one on either flank, they saw their prey scramble out of the opposite side and bolt like a hare across the open ground beyond.

There were two shell-holes in the distance, for one of which he was obviously making, but just as Hawke dropped to his knee and covered him with his rifle, the German searchlights went out, leaving everything pitch dark.

"That's done us, Hawke," cried Dennis bitterly, as the marksman of A Company fired a random shot.

"'Arf a mo, sir. If I didn't wing 'im, I'll bet I've 'eaded 'im orf to the right"; and he sent a brace of bullets pinging into the darkness.

"Lor lumme!" he chuckled the next moment, "there ain't no fool like an Allemong. What did he want to fire back for?" And he wiped a great gout of the chalky mud that had splashed up into his face as a Mauser bullet struck the ground between them. "'E's in that 'ole to the right—that's where we'll find 'im, sure as my name's 'Arry 'Awke. Come on, sir, don't make a sound!"

With the switching off of the searchlights the enemy barrage had ceased, and the deafening crash of the German shells was succeeded by a weird silence.

The distant boom of the British firing seemed very far off and almost insignificant in that sudden transition, and recharging his empty revolver as he went forward, Dennis wormed himself cautiously to the edge of the crump-hole, where he hoped to find his enemy.

It was still pouring in torrents as his chin came on a level with the ragged rim, but the fierce hope died out of his heart.

The shell-hole was an old one, the rain had filled it almost to the brim, and he ground his teeth, knowing that the spy had outwitted them after all. He knew now that, in spite of Hawke's shots, the villain with the charmed life must have chanced his arm and kept straight on between the two shell-holes, and would even then be nearing the German position, gloating over his success.

"I have missed the chance of my lifetime," he thought bitterly, when a star shell burst directly above him, lighting up the rain pool like a sheet of silver.

He had already picked himself up, and was clearing his throat to give his unseen companion a hail, when a warning whistle came from the opposite edge of the hole, and he saw Hawke's head and shoulders and a pointing arm.

Among the splashing raindrops in the centre of the pool a white face parted the water.

It was Von Dussel come up to breathe, and as the face sank out of sight again, Dennis dived in after it, regardless of all consequences.

* * * * *

Major Dashwood and the Brigadier, stumbling forward along the German communication, met three men carrying something between them, and the third man had the fingers of his left hand twined in a tight clutch on the collar of one of the bearers.

"What is all this, Dennis?" demanded the Brigadier, who had been an indignant witness of that strange chase, without in the least understanding what it meant.

"Little Wetherby dead, pater, and Von Dussel very much alive, and none the worse for a cold bath," came the answer; "the court martial that sits on his wife to-morrow will be able to kill two birds with one stone."

"My wife!" exclaimed the spy. "Ottilie in your hands!"

"Yes, you brute, we've bagged the pair of you," said Dennis, with a grim laugh; "it's been Von Dussel versus Dashwood for a long time, but the Dashwoods have 'won out' in the end."

"I do not understand," faltered Von Dussel in a choking voice, and then instantly recovering his true Prussian bluster: "I demand the right treatment accorded to every officer who has the misfortune to be taken prisoner. I have high connections in my country, and I am willing to give you my parole."

"Parole for a cowardly murderer!" interrupted Dennis hotly. "You are talking through the back of your neck, and you know it. Besides, apart from all that, there is only one end for spies."

Then all the bluster went out of the cur, and he shivered like a man with ague as they took him away under escort into a safe place.

In the rear of that formidable trench, which they had taken with such gallantry, the Reedshires buried their dead. There were not many of them, considering the fury of the fight, but the little row of white wood crosses told of good comrades gone for ever, and had a grim significance all its own.

Harry Hawke stood in the rain, leaning on his rifle before one of the crosses, reading the simple inscription which the armourer-sergeant had painted for him on the rough wood: "Jim Tiddler, 2/12th R.R.R., aged 21. He was a good pal."

"Yus, he was a good pal," muttered Hawke, "one of the best, and so was Mr. Wetherby. I'm glad old Tiddler's planted alongside 'im."

His wicked little eye ranged away to another chalk mound which had no name upon it. It stood apart from the rest, and was close to that angle of the German salient where Dennis had crouched on the night that all the survivors would remember as long as they remembered anything. An ugly red smear on the sandbags at the head of the mound had not been washed away by the rain.

Two spies had been buried there, after a court martial held in a dug-out, and one of them had been a woman, who had tried to brazen it out in spite of the overwhelming evidence produced against them. Threats, tears, piteous appeals for mercy, Ottilie's big black eyes, all had proved in vain.

Then she had swallowed poison, but the tabloid she tried to pass to her husband was intercepted, and the volley of ball cartridge that dealt stern justice in the grey light of a wet afternoon had rid our lines of a deadly and insidious peril that had cost us many lives.

"Shooting was too good for 'im, the dirty dog," said Private Hawke, as he lit a woodbine and turned away.

And that was the requiem of the Von Dussels!

* * * * *

The weather brightened and the Great Push still rolled on. Day by day the shell dumps grew to incredible size, and the British guns never ceased their remorseless preparations. Names hitherto unknown to British readers became household words to those at home, who, reading between the lines, knew that at last our great and glorious armies were on the high road to victory.

It was not to be yet, but it was coming, slowly but surely, and Mrs. Dashwood, in the old home with the green lawn sloping to the water's edge, wished a thousand times that she had been born a man that she might have taken her share in the great achievement.

A month passed, and to the house in Regent's Park came a letter, written on a folding-table by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, and in the writer's ears as he scrawled the lines was the tramp of the relief filing past his dug-out door.

"Darling little Mater," wrote Dennis, "I'm going to give you a surprise, unless the Gazette's out already. You've heard me speak of Private Hawke of ours, the crack shot of my company, well, he and I have got three days' leave for a special reason. The King is going to present Hawke with the V.C., which he has deserved over and over again, at Buckingham Palace next Thursday. Incidentally I might mention that I am also to receive it on the same day. Also the Military Cross, likewise the D.S.O. It makes me positively blush as I sit here, and I really believe I'm the most fortunate beggar in the whole of our crush, if not in the Army.

"Don't make any mistake, dear, it has been sheer luck on my part. I've just happened to be there at the right moment. Some beggars who have done far more than I have have got nothing—but there it is.

"By the way, the French have been awfully decent to me. Somehow, Joffre got to know about a little scrap I had when the French attacked a German trench, and I helped to carry out the commandant, who was badly wounded. They have given me their Military Medal for that, and for inducing a German company to surrender I've got the Croix de Guerre, their newest decoration, you know; and I'll be hanged, but on top of it all the Cross of the Legion of Honour has come along for a little air raid into the Black Forest with a charming pilote-aviateur named Laval. It was really only a sort of joy ride, but I managed to bring Laval back after he was hit. Thank goodness, they tell me he's almost well again, and I must say I like the French awfully.

"I never told you anything about that business, because I was afraid you might think I was risking my neck unnecessarily, but you know, dear, one's got to do it on a job like this. And oh, I say, what a pig I am, gassing about myself before I tell you that dear old Bob is coming over with us to receive the M.C. It's an awfully pretty thing with silver-and-blue ribbon—and—though mind you, mater, this is not to be put about yet in case it doesn't come off—but there's a strong rumour round here that the Governor's to have a division! Haig was awfully delighted at the way he handled that business about a month ago—I mean when we downed your old friend Van Drissel. Hope you are not running any more refugees, eh, what? Now be at the station to meet us, and if you like to kiss Hawke, you may. He's saved my life more than once."

Mrs. Dashwood closed her eyes, and her lips moved in silent prayer. She was thanking Heaven that her husband and sons were "making good" in the hour of her country's triumph!



PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.4 F40.617



- Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors corrected in the text: Page 22 Right-oh changed to Right-o Page 26 Right-oh changed to Right-o Page 55 Right-oh changed to Right-o Page 180 reconnaisance changed to reconnaissance -

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