p and
down again--"we 'ad words, an' parted. I--I never set eyes on 'er dial
since."

The voice of W. Keyse ended in an odd kind of squeak. Nobody looked at him
as he bit his thin lips furiously, and blinked the unmanly tears away.
Then he went on: "It's--it's near on two months I bin lookin' for 'er.
She--she--sometimes I think she's made a way out of the lines after
another bloke--a kind o' Dutchy spy 'oo was a pal of 'ers, or--or else
she's dead. There's times I've dreamed I seen 'er dead!" His voice bounded
up in that queer squeak again. The word "dead" was wrung out of him like a
long-fanged double molar. His lips were drawn awry in a grimace of
anguish, and the pipe he held shook in his gaunt and grimy hand, so
perilously that half a dozen other hands, as gaunt and even grimier, shot
out as by a single impulse to save it from falling. "Tyke it an' smoke it
between you," said W. Keyse, and the Adam's apple jerked again as he
gulped. "But read the writin' on the bit o' pyper first, and mind
you--mind you give it back." He resigned the treasure, and turned his face
away.

"Blessed Mary!" came in the accent of Kildare, breaking the silence, "let
me hould ut in me han's!"

"Spell out the screeve," ordered the R.E. Reserve man imperiously.

The Town Guard who had questioned the officer about the difference of
time, deciphered the blotty writing on the slip of paper pinned round the
stem of the new briar-root. It ran thus:

"i ope yu wil Engoy this Pip Deer; i Fild it A Purpus with
Love and Menney Apey Riturnse. from

"FARE AIR."

"'Is gal?" interrogated the Reserve man.

"His girl," assented the man who had read.

"And he never saw her no more, so he did not!" commented the Cardiff
stoker as the pipe travelled from hand to hand to be smelt at, dandled,
worshipped by every man in turn. Only the Sergeant-gunner, the grey-headed
ex-Royal Field Artilleryman, maintained self-command by dint of looking
very hard the other way. Then said Kildare impetuously:

"Take ut back, Corp'ril Keyse. 'Tis little wan poipe av tobacca wud count
for betune six starvin' savigees."

"Wot I wants," growled the Reserve man, "is to over-'aul a bacca factory
afire, and clap my mouth to 'er chimbley-shaft. So take it back, Corporal.
It's no manner o' good to me!"

All the other voices joined in the chorus, and the be-papered pipe was
thrust back upon its owner. W. Keyse thanked them soberly, and put the
gift of his lo