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I want always to remember Bousies, the village of gardens and hedgerows and autumn tints where we saw the war out, and lay under shell fire for the last time; whence we fought our final battle on November 4th, when young Hearn of A Battery was killed by machine-gun bullets at 70 yards' range, and Major Bullivant, with a smashed arm and a crippled thigh, huddled under a wall until Dumble found him the concluding fight that brought me a strange war trophy in a golfing-iron found in a hamlet that the Boche had sprawled upon for four full years.... And the name punched on the iron was that of an Oxford Street firm.

One day in October, Uncle Jake, our head vaquero, reported the colts to be missing out of our back pasture. Careful examination revealed the cutting of the fence. Obviously the colts had been stolen. Ajax suggested that we should employ old man Dumble to help us to recover the stolen property. He was shrewd and persevering, and he knew every man, woman, and child within a radius of fifty miles.

Them colts won't stand it. Young things must feed an' rest. The saloon-keeper allowed they were footsore a'ready, and kinder petered out. We must keep our eyes skinned." "You're a wonder," said Ajax. "How you divined that the thief would travel this trail beats me." "Wal," said old man Dumble, "it's this way.

He was shouting towards the wreck, his hand to his mouth. "Send the master over next, you lubbers, or we'll cut the line. Do you hear?" There was no reply or, if there was, it was drowned in the wind. Lessingham gripped the fisherman by the arm. "Whom do you mean by 'master'?" he demanded. Dumble scarcely glanced at his interlocutor. "Why, Sir Henry Cranston, to be sure," was the agitated answer.

"That's where Dumble did so well. Came along with the cavalry an hour and a half before any Horse Artillery battery, and brought his guns up in line, like F.A.T.... See that cemetery on the top of the hill?... the Boche made it in August 1914; lot of the old Army buried there, and it's been jolly well looked after.

I never seen a man git so mad." "And that's all?" "That's all, but me an' the Baron ain't speakin'." We promised to do what we could, more, it must be confessed, on the Baron's account than for the sake of old man Dumble. Accordingly, we tried to persuade the Baron that his secret at any rate was still inviolate. He listened incredulously.

Take your choice, he say, 'and we can fight till ze cows come home! He use zose words, mes amis, 'till ze cows come home! Tiens! Ze Frisian- Holstein cows, who go dry when zey do come home hein?" He was so furiously angry that we dared not laugh, but we were consumed with curiosity to know what secret Dumble had stolen. The Baron did not inform us.

"We've lost quite a lot of men since you've been away," he told me. "Do you realise the Brigade has been only four days out of the line since August 1st? You've heard about young Beale being wounded, of course? I was on leave, and so was Beadle; and Tincler was sick, so there was only Dumble and Beale running the battery.

At 7 P.M. a lieutenant on a motor-cycle arrived with Corps orders for the morrow. We were to leave for Elincourt immediately the tactical situation demanded it. We dined early, and sought our beds early too. I had been asleep two minutes, as I thought really about an hour and a half when Dumble woke me up.

I could smell the sage, strongly pungent, and the alkaline dust began to irritate my throat; the sun, if one stood still, was strong enough to blister the skin of the hands. For three-quarters of an hour it seemed to me that the distance between us and our quarry remained constant; but Dumble said we were falling behind. The thief was lighter than any of us, and his horse was evidently a stayer.