on, which brought me to my feet, with the
inevitable,--

"What's that?"

He took a long pull at his tea before he replied quietly,--"Another
division across the Marne."

Then he went on as if there had been no interruption:--

"This Yorkshire regiment has had hard luck. Only one other regiment in
the Expedition has had worse. They have marched from the Belgian
frontier, and they have been in four big actions in the retreat--Mons,
Cambrai, Saint-Quentin, and La Fere. Saint-Quentin was pretty rough
luck. We went into the trenches a full regiment. We came out to
retreat again with four hundred men--and I left my younger brother
there."

I gasped; I could not find a word to say. He did not seem to feel it
necessary that I should. He simply winked his eyelids, stiffened his
stern mouth, and went right on; and I forgot all about the Uhlans:--

"At La Fere we lost our commissary on the field. It was burned, and
these lads have not had a decent feed since--that was three days ago. We
have passed through few towns since, and those were evacuated,--drummed
out and fruit from the orchards on the roadsides is about all they have
had--hardly good feed for a marching army in such hot weather. Besides,
we were moving pretty fast--but in order--to get across the Marne,
toward which we have been drawing the Germans, and in every one of these
battles we have been fighting with one man to their ten."

I asked him where the Germans were.

"Can't say," he replied.

"And the French?"

"No idea. We've not seen them--yet. We understood that we were to be
reinforced at Saint-Quentin by a French detachment at four o'clock.
They got there at eleven--the battle was over--and lost. But these boys
gave a wonderful account of themselves, and in spite of the disaster
retreated in perfect order."

Then he told me that at the last moment he ordered his company to lie
close in the trench and let the Germans come right up to them, and not
to budge until he ordered them to give them what they hate--the
bayonet. The Germans were within a few yards when a German automobile
carrying a machine gun bore down on them and discovered their position,
but the English sharpshooters picked off the five men the car carried
before they could fire a shot, and after that it was every man for
himself--what the French call "sauve qui peut."

The Uhlans came back to my mind, and it seemed to me a good time to ask
him what he was doing here. Oddl