ht, to deliver up the horse whence I had pinched
it, and nobody any the wiser in the dewy morn. You see, it was a good
scheme."

"What happened?" I asked.

"It happened thuswise," he answered, breaking out into fresh eloquence,
with fantastic similes and expressions of which I can give only the
spirit. "Leaving a Pozieres, which, as you doubtless know, unless you
are a bloody staff-officer, is a place where the devil goes about like
a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, where he leaves his victims'
entrails hanging on to barbed wire, and where the bodies of your friends
and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes--you know the place?--I put my
legs across the colonel's horse, which was in the wagonlines, and set
forth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had pinched him--forgive my
slang. I should have said it in the French language, vole--and resented
me. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his back. Twice did he entangle
himself in barbed wire deliberately. Once did I have to coerce him with
many stripes to pass a tank. Then the heavens opened upon us and it
rained. It rained until I was wet to the skin, in spite of sheltering
beneath a tree, one branch of which, owing to the stubborn temper of my
steed, struck me a stinging blow across the face. So in no joyful spirit
I came at last to Amiens, this whited sepulcher, this Circe's capital,
this den of thieves, this home of vampires. There I dined, not
wisely, but too well. I drank of the flowing cup--une bouteille de
champagne--and I met a maiden as ugly as sin, but beautiful in my
eyes after Pozieres--you understand--and accompanied her to her poor
lodging--in a most verminous place, sir--where we discoursed upon the
problems of life and love. O youth! O war! O hell!... My horse, that
brute who resented me, was in charge of an 'ostler, whom I believe
verily is a limb of Satan, in the yard without. It was late when I left
that lair of Circe, where young British officers, even as myself, are
turned into swine. It was late and dark, and I was drunk. Even now I am
very drunk. I may say that I am becoming drunker and drunker."

It was true. The fumes of bad champagne were working in the boy's brain,
and he leaned heavily against me.

"It was then that that happened which will undoubtedly lead to my
undoing, and blast my career as I have blasted my soul. The horse was
there in the yard, but without saddle or bridle.

"'Where is my saddle and where is my bridle, oh, naughty