e pools of the brown river. Then I slept and
smoked alternately, and began to get furiously hungry.

Once I woke to hear the soldiers discussing the war. There was an
argument between a lance-corporal in the Camerons and a sapper private
about some trivial incident on the Somme.

'I tell ye I was there,' said the Cameron. 'We were relievin' the Black
Watch, and Fritz was shelling the road, and we didna get up to the line
till one o'clock in the mornin'. Frae Frickout Circus to the south end
o' the High Wood is every bit o' five mile.'

'Not abune three,' said the sapper dogmatically.

'Man, I've trampit it.'

'Same here. I took up wire every nicht for a week.'

The Cameron looked moodily round the company. 'I wish there was anither
man here that kent the place. He wad bear me out. These boys are no
good, for they didna join till later. I tell ye it's five mile.'

'Three,' said the sapper.

Tempers were rising, for each of the disputants felt his veracity
assailed. It was too hot for a quarrel and I was so drowsy that I was
heedless.

'Shut up, you fools,' I said. 'The distance is six kilometres, so
you're both wrong.'

My tone was so familiar to the men that it stopped the wrangle, but it
was not the tone of a publisher's traveller. Mr Linklater cocked his
ears.

'What's a kilometre, Mr McCaskie?' he asked blandly.

'Multiply by five and divide by eight and you get the miles.'

I was on my guard now, and told a long story of a nephew who had been
killed on the Somme, and how I had corresponded with the War Office
about his case. 'Besides,' I said, 'I'm a great student o' the
newspapers, and I've read all the books about the war. It's a difficult
time this for us all, and if you can take a serious interest in the
campaign it helps a lot. I mean working out the places on the map and
reading Haig's dispatches.'

'Just so,' he said dryly, and I thought he watched me with an odd look
in his eyes.

A fresh idea possessed me. This man had been in Gresson's company, he
knew German, he was obviously something very different from what he
professed to be. What if he were in the employ of our own Secret
Service? I had appeared out of the void at the Kyle, and I had made but
a poor appearance as a bagman, showing no knowledge of my own trade. I
was in an area interdicted to the ordinary public; and he had good
reason to keep an eye on my movements. He was going south, and so was
I; clearly we must somehow part co