ggered and slouched forward on his hands and knees. The
bandoliers he was carrying, scattered. Several men rushed to him but he
got to his feet himself and ordered them back to their posts. An ugly red
stain was spreading over his tartan riding breeches and leggings, but he
staggered onward with the ammunition. He had not gone a dozen steps when
both his arms flew up into the air and he fell backward. This time he did
not move. He had been shot straight through the heart, and another
commander of the Black Watch had gone to join the long line of heroes who
had so often led this regiment to victory.

Many of our company commanders were picked off by the enemy because of
their distinctive dress, their celluloid map cases affording excellent
targets.

My memory of this fight is somewhat fragmentary. There are phases which
are all but blanks to me. Others stand out with startling clarity.

We were advancing in skirmishing order through a wood. A pal of my old
athletic days, Ned McD----, fighting a few yards from me in our scattered
line, fell with a bullet through both thighs. I made him as comfortable as
I could in a nook about twenty paces back from where our men, lying on
their stomachs, were keeping up a steady rifle fire through the
underbrush. I had hardly returned to the line when the whistle of our
platoon commander sounded shrilly, and we were ordered to retire to the
farther edge of the plateau, where our men could have better protection
from the enemy fire. I hurriedly placed McD---- under the edge of a bank,
where, at least, he would not be trampled on by men or horses.

"Don't attempt to leave the spot, Ned," I said. "I'll get back to you
to-night if there's an opportunity." The chance did come, but when I
reached the spot he had disappeared. Our subsequent meeting--the story of
which I shall tell--is one of my few agreeable recollections in the train
of the tragedy of our campaign.

But to go back to the fight.

Soon after leaving the spot where McD---- lay, I joined in a charge on a
line of hidden trenches. We were upon them, and it was steel and teeth
again. I saw an officer run in under a bayonet thrust, and jab his thumbs
into a German's eyes. The boche rolled upon the ground, screaming. How
long we fought, I do not know. When it was over we began to pick up the
wounded. It was night. The Prussian guns were still hammering at us, and
some of the shells set fire to a number of haystacks in the field wh