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Immediately after Lord Kew's wound, and as it was necessary to apprise the Newcome family of the accident which had occurred, the good-natured young Kew had himself written a brief note to acquaint his relatives with his mishap, and had even taken the precaution to antedate a couple of billets to be despatched on future days; kindly forgeries, which told the Newcome family and the Countess of Kew, that Lord Kew was progressing very favourably, and that his hurt was trifling.
Perhaps it will be just as well here to explain the remainder of the daily routine and how the men are fed and cared for. Some time during the night the company waggons, which are kept in billets at the quartermaster's stores, are loaded with food for the men in the trenches.
I knew it wouldn't be any use to take them to billets, because the wires were all down on account of the rain. So I started through the marshes to get into the road to Rheims. Those marshes are worse than the ones we have here. Sometimes I had to swim. It took me two hours, I guess. Anyway, if you have to do a thing you can do it. "When I got to the road it was easy.
"Let old Fritzie see a light, ''Ello! 'e says, 'blokes in billets! an' over comes a 'arf-dozen shells knockin' you all to blazes." As we came within the range of rifle fire, we again changed our formation, and marched in single file along the edge of the road. The sharp crack! crack!= of small arms now sounded with vicious and ominous distinctness.
There is one thing, however, before which the picket is impotent a pass. It is like a free pardon to a convict; it opens to him the whole world that is for the period it covers. The two most difficult things in military life are to obtain permit of absence from billets, and the struggle against the natural impulse to overstay the limit of leave.
The last of these shuttle-cock moves occurred on July 31, from our field at Pont Asquin back to St. Hilaire, whose billets few of us were anxious to revisit. It is already dusk as the sanitary men, like so many sorcerers, stoop in the final rites of fire and burial.
So, day by day, as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, and piled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck, drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirt which often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Every shovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet you stack, is helping Spurling to betray you the earlier.
The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably taken.
Meanwhile, the word has just gone forth, quietly and without fuss, that we are to uproot ourselves from our present billets, and be ready to move at 5 A.M. to-morrow morning. Is this the Big Push at last? We have been waiting for the best part of two days and nights listening to the thunder of the big guns, but as yet we have received no invitation to "butt in."
It was only partially closed, precautions having been taken to prevent its being suddenly pushed to from without, by means of placing billets of wood on the upper step so as to interfere with the shutting. We found no difficulty in getting a full view of the interior of the cabin through the cracks where the hinges were placed.
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