ow, Peter looked a mighty happy
man. The last I saw he was smoking his pipe with a batch of young lads
in a Flying Corps waggon and heading straight for Germany.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

How an Exile Returned to His Own People

Next morning I found the Army Commander on his way to Doullens.

'Take over the division?' he said. 'Certainly. I'm afraid there isn't
much left of it. I'll tell Carr to get through to the Corps
Headquarters, when he can find them. You'll have to nurse the remnants,
for they can't be pulled out yet--not for a day or two. Bless me,
Hannay, there are parts of our line which we're holding with a man and
a boy. You've got to stick it out till the French take over. We're not
hanging on by our eyelids--it's our eyelashes now.'

'What about positions to fall back on, sir?' I asked.

'We're doing our best, but we haven't enough men to prepare them.' He
plucked open a map. 'There we're digging a line--and there. If we can
hold that bit for two days we shall have a fair line resting on the
river. But we mayn't have time.'

Then I told him about Blenkiron, whom of course he had heard of. 'He
was one of the biggest engineers in the States, and he's got a nailing
fine eye for country. He'll make good somehow if you let him help in
the job.'

'The very fellow,' he said, and he wrote an order. 'Take this to Jacks
and he'll fix up a temporary commission. Your man can find a uniform
somewhere in Amiens.'

After that I went to the detail camp and found that Ivery had duly
arrived.

'The prisoner has given no trouble, sirr,' Hamilton reported. 'But he's
a wee thing peevish. They're saying that the Gairmans is gettin' on
fine, and I was tellin' him that he should be proud of his ain folk.
But he wasn't verra weel pleased.'

Three days had wrought a transformation in Ivery. That face, once so
cool and capable, was now sharpened like a hunted beast's. His
imagination was preying on him and I could picture its torture. He, who
had been always at the top directing the machine, was now only a cog in
it. He had never in his life been anything but powerful; now he was
impotent. He was in a hard, unfamiliar world, in the grip of something
which he feared and didn't understand, in the charge of men who were in
no way amenable to his persuasiveness. It was like a proud and bullying
manager suddenly forced to labour in a squad of navvies, and worse, for
there was the gnawing physical fear of what was coming.