not had time to boil. The colonel had only been away ten
minutes. The tired drivers were unrolling their blankets and preparing
for slumber. Suddenly my ear caught a voice calling up the
hillside--the colonel's--followed twice by the stentorian tones of his
servant.

The cry was, "Saddle-up!"

VII. STILL IN RETREAT

8.15 P.M.: "I found that D Battery had moved off--gone towards the
other side of Ugny, and A and C were also on the march," explained the
colonel, when Headquarter carts and waggons--parked out for the night
only half an hour before--had again got under way (taking the road
between Villequier Aumont and Ugny) for the third time during
twenty-two hours. "Division got news that the Boche was putting in two
fresh divisions, and intended to attack by moonlight," he added, "and
they thought our guns were too close up to be safe; so the
brigade-major hurried down and told the batteries to move back at once.
We turn south-west from Ugny and make for Commenchon, and come into
action there as soon as we get further news from Division. I have sent
out orders to all the batteries, and they are marching to Commenchon
independently."

It was a radiant night. The moon rode high in a star-spangled sky;
there was a glow and a sense of beauty in the air--a beauty that
exalted soul and mind, and turned one's thoughts to music and
loveliness and home. The dry hard roads glistened white and clean; and
in the silvery light the silhouettes of men marching steadily,
purposefully, took on a certain dignity that the garish sun had not
allowed to be revealed.

Whether we spoke of it or not, each one of us listened expectantly for
the swift-rushing scream of a high-velocity shell, or the long-drawn
sough of an approaching 5.9. This main road, along which our retreating
columns were winding their slow even way, was bound to be strafed.

We rode through Ugny, two days ago a Corps H.Q., deserted now save for
the military police, and for odd parties of engineers, signallers, and
stretcher-bearers. Then our way took us down a wide sunken road,
through an undulating countryside that stretched up to remote
pine-tipped hills to right and left of us. A battalion of French
infantry had halted by the roadside; their voices, softer, more tuneful
than those of our men, seemed in keeping with the moonlit scene; and in
their long field-blue coats they somehow seemed bigger, more matured,
than our foot-soldiers.

We had marched fiv