n hour's job.'

The cheerfulness I had acquired in the upper air still filled me. I sat
down in a ditch, as merry as a sand-boy, and lit a pipe. I was
possessed by a boyish spirit of casual adventure, and waited on the
next turn of fortune's wheel with only a pleasant amusement.

That turn was not long in coming. Archie appeared very breathless.

'Look here, sir, there's the deuce of a row up there. They've been
wirin' about you all over the country, and they know you're with me.
They've got the police, and they'll have you in five minutes if you
don't leg it. I lied like billy-o and said I had never heard of you,
but they're comin' to see for themselves. For God's sake get off ...
You'd better keep in cover down that hollow and round the back of these
trees. I'll stay here and try to brazen it out. I'll get strafed to
blazes anyhow ... I hope you'll get me out of the scrape, sir.'

'Don't you worry, my lad,' I said. 'I'll make it all square when I get
back to town. I'll make for Bradfield, for this place is a bit
conspicuous. Goodbye, Archie. You're a good chap and I'll see you don't
suffer.'

I started off down the hollow of the moor, trying to make speed atone
for lack of strategy, for it was hard to know how much my pursuers
commanded from that higher ground. They must have seen me, for I heard
whistles blown and men's cries. I struck a road, crossed it, and passed
a ridge from which I had a view of Bradfield six miles off. And as I
ran I began to reflect that this kind of chase could not last long.
They were bound to round me up in the next half-hour unless I could
puzzle them. But in that bare green place there was no cover, and it
looked as if my chances were pretty much those of a hare coursed by a
good greyhound on a naked moor.

Suddenly from just in front of me came a familiar sound. It was the
roar of guns--the slam of field-batteries and the boom of small
howitzers. I wondered if I had gone off my head. As I plodded on the
rattle of machine-guns was added, and over the ridge before me I saw
the dust and fumes of bursting shells. I concluded that I was not mad,
and that therefore the Germans must have landed. I crawled up the last
slope, quite forgetting the pursuit behind me.

And then I'm blessed if I did not look down on a veritable battle.

There were two sets of trenches with barbed wire and all the fixings,
one set filled with troops and the other empty. On these latter shells
were bursting, b