e came from the north, and out of the darkness loomed a
British motor-lorry, lurching and swaying along the rough cobbles of
the _pave_. Some of Cockerell's men were lying dead asleep in the
middle of the road, right at the junction. The lorry was going twenty
miles an hour.

"Get into the side of the road, you men!" shouted Cockerell, "or
they'll run over you. You know what these M.T. drivers are!"

With indignant haste, and at the last possible moment, the kilted
figures scattered to either side of the narrow causeway. The usual
stereotyped and vitriolic remonstrances were hurled after the great
hooded vehicle as it lurched past.

And then a most unusual thing happened. The lorry slowed down, and
finally stopped, a hundred yards away. An officer descended, and began
to walk back. Cockerell rose to his weary feet and walked to meet him.

The officer wore a major's crown upon the shoulder-straps of his
sheepskin-lined "British Warm" and the badge of the Army Service Corps
upon his cap. Cockerell, indignant at the manner in which his platoon
had been hustled off the road, saluted stiffly, and muttered:
"Good-morning, sir!"

"Good-morning!" said the Major. He was a stout man of nearly fifty,
with twinkling blue eyes and a short-clipped mustache. Cockerell
judged him to be one of the few remnants of the original British Army.

"I stopped," explained the older man, "to apologise for the scandalous
way that fellow drove over you. It was perfectly damnable; but you
know what these converted taxi-drivers are! This swine forgot for the
moment that he had an officer on board, and hogged it as usual. He
goes under arrest as soon as we get back to billets."

"Thank you very much, sir," said Master Cockerell, entirely thawed.
"I'm afraid my chaps were lying all over the road; but they are pretty
well down and out at present."

"Where have you come from?" inquired the Major, turning a curious eye
upon Cockerell's prostrate followers.

Cockerell explained When he had finished, he added wistfully--

"I suppose you have not got an odd tin or two of bully to give away,
sir? My fellows are about--"

For answer, the Major took the Lieutenant by the arm and led him
towards the lorry.

"You have come," he announced, "to the very man you want. I am
practically Mr. Harrod. In fact, I am a Corps Supply Officer. How
would a Maconochie apiece suit your boys?"

Cockerell, repressing the ecstatic phrases which crowded to his
tongu