thought to myself, maybe I'll never get back. All sorts of
possibilities passed through my mind, and between this and the awful pain
that throbbed all over me, I felt like as if I'd go mad.

"It began to get dark and my patience got exhausted. Then the idea came
into my head that I could maybe drag myself along with my hands a wee bit
nearer our lines. I thought of your promise, Reuter, but I couldn't stay.
A few of the lads around me pegged out one after the other, and it made me
feel fair frenzied.

"Do ye remember Stanley Stenning, an English fellow of C company? Weel, he
crawled out a wee while before me. I've heard since that he was home, but
minus a leg, but I haven't heard so far of any of the other wounded
fellows that were in the nook with me.

"Weel, to get back to my own experience. It was awful--the pain--it racked
me through and through, as I tried to move ahead by the aid of my hands. I
would take a grip on anything I could get hold of and drag myself on a wee
bit at a time. I had managed to do about a hundred yards, when I seemed to
sense that I had taken the wrong direction, and oh! how weak I was about
that time--it's past telling. I just simply had to lie there--I couldn't
drag myself another inch.

"I remember seeing a few bushes about fifteen yards ahead--it seemed so
far!--and at first I wished I could manage to get to them, thinking I
might get out of the way of the enemy, should any of them come along. But
after a few minutes I decided it was perhaps as well that I was exhausted,
because if I got there and should lose consciousness, ye might not find
me, and that it was just as weel I was in the open. So I tried to content
myself, but it was maddening.

"In dragging myself to this spot I passed here and there one of our
lads--then again I would make out one of the Camerons--and Reuter, they
were so--still! But I crawled on, and as the vision of the lass came to
me, I felt braver, and made up my mind to hold out as long as I possibly
could.

"By this time it was night--the time seemed to drag so! Then I remember
hearing the sound of some one moving about, and I was just in the act of
calling for help when the thought flashed through my brain that maybe they
were Germans; so I kept still. The sound soon died away. My! how often,
since then, I've wished I _had_ called out.

"I lay there wishing and hoping that I might be found before morning, but
the hours dragged on. I was growing fainter and