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for the searchlights had been suddenly withdrawn, and were now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. L