utside through the shack past Scotty, out through the other wall,
and Scotty, ducking and dodging like a man trying to buck the line in a
football game, shot through the door and vanished in the night.

The pan of bacon he had been cooking was still intact except that it had
a coating of plaster-of-paris from the walls and ceiling of the room,
and I proceeded to put it under my belt as fast as my jaws would work,
and then made for my dugout. I was just settling down to a quiet smoke
when I heard the Major calling for Scotty at the top of his voice.
Getting no response, he called for me and I hastened to his quarters.

"Grant, go down and see if that Scotch cook has fallen in the soup; find
out if cookhouse is ready." "Yes, sir." I said nothing about what had
happened and returned to the cookhouse to find six Algerians devouring
the officers' rations in such fashion as to make one think of the man in
the side show who was advertised in letters twenty feet deep as the
original snake-eater of South America; there wasn't enough left for a
one-man meal. I reported to the O.C. that there were no signs of Scotty
but that the cookhouse had been hit by a shell.

"Go and see if he is at the dressing station." I went back to the
station. For nearly a mile the wounded and gassed men were lying on each
side of the road waiting for conveyances to remove them. I spoke to a
Tommy who had met with a peculiar accident; he had two plates in his
mouth and the concussion of a shell explosion in his immediate vicinity
had broken the plates into four pieces, leaving him practically
toothless.

Strongly suspecting by that time that if Scotty were anywhere on earth
he was at the rear in the wagon line, I waited around the station just
long enough to lend plausibility to my search before reporting to the
O.C. The Major was in a towering rage over our losses, and, damning the
cook, he dismissed me. The officers that night had to look to another
cookhouse for their evening meal.

Next morning I was sent for by the Major and dispatched to the wagon
lines on an errand;--at that time I was fulfilling the duties of a
runner for our unit;--he also told me to have a lookout for the cook
while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The
first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got
there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing
round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me