animals he had cared for could be used as a hat rack and
the officer ordered them shot and buried. The cook's thrift again came
to the front. "Grant, I'll tell ye what I'll do, if ye'll help me take
the carcasses to an abattoir we'll sell them for forty francs, and then
we can dig a grave and let on we've buried them, and I'll go half wi'
ye. What do you say?" The scheme looked plausible enough to me and I
consented, and I was the richer by 20 francs.

Owing to his misfortune with the mules the O.C. ordered him to report
for duty on my gun and Scotty came into the lines with us the following
week. I was in charge of a trench mortar and our duty was to send over 8
or 10 shells, instantly take the gun to pieces and remove it to another
position for the purpose of getting away from the return fire that Fritz
was sure to send. When the first 10 messages were sent across, I ordered
all hands to take their respective parts and carry them to the point
designated, I superintending the dismemberment of the gun. When the last
man, who happened to be Scotty, had taken away his respective part of
the gun, I picked up the range-finder and started for the spot about a
hundred yards off down the trench. I had scarcely gone 10 yards when an
ear-splitting roar came hurtling through the air and an explosion
followed that made the very earth tremble. I knew it was somewhere in
the neighborhood of our selected spot and I anxiously hastened my
steps. I got there to find every man of my gun crew with one exception
blown to atoms, the exception being Scotty, but he too had paid the
supreme price. With the help of another soldier, we carried him to the
rear of the cookhouse and covered him with a blanket. When daylight
broke I went over there with a party to give him as decent a burial as
possible, and the new cook, who was a Scotchman, came out to have a look
at the dead pal.

"Well, if it isn't Jock Henderson!" he exclaimed.

"Did you know him?" I asked.

"Know him! Why, mon, we were bakers taegither in Glascae. I could tell
him anywhere by his bow-legs, an' he's got a scar on one o' them as big
as your face."

"Yes, I know he has, where the shell grazed him at Mons."

"Shell grazed him at Mons? Shell hell! It was a pan o' hot dough that
fell on his leg in the bake-shop, and I'll never forget his yell tae my
dyin' day."

Like the last star of dawn the only remaining shred of poor Scotty's
valor faded away and was gone.

CHAP