he might be shot. He had not thought of that when he
started on his quest. It had seemed so simple to account for half an
hour's absence by saying that he had lost his way in the dark. But
now, that plausible excuse was invalid....

Doggie thought terribly hard that quiet, sea-scented morning. After
all, it did not very much matter what they did to him. Sticking him up
against a wall and shooting him was a remote possibility; he was in
the British and not the German Army. Field punishments of unpleasant
kinds were only inflicted on people convicted of unpleasant
delinquencies. If he were a sergeant or a corporal, he doubtless would
be broken. But such is the fortunate position of a private, that he
cannot be degraded to an inferior rank. At the worst they might give
him cells when he recovered. Well, he could stick it. It didn't
matter. What really mattered was Jeanne. Was she in undisputed
possession of her packet? When it was a question of practical warfare,
Doggie had blind faith in his officers--a faith perhaps even more
childlike than that of his fellow-privates, for officers were the men
who had come through the ordeal in which he had so lamentably failed;
but when it came to administrative affairs, he was more critical. He
had suffered during his military career from more than one subaltern
on whose arid consciousness the brain-wave never beat. He had never
met even a field officer before whom, in the realm of intellect, he
had stood in awe. If any one of those dimly envisaged and still more
dimly remembered officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers had ordered him
to stand on his head on top of the parapet, he would have obeyed in
cheerful confidence; but he was not at all certain that, in the effort
to deliver the packet to Jeanne, they would not make an unholy mess of
things. He saw stacks of dirty yellowish bits of paper, with A.F. No.
something or the other, floating between Frelus and the Lancashire
Battalion H.Q. and the Brigade H.Q. and the Divisional H.Q., and so on
through the majesty of G.H.Q. to the awful War Office itself. In
pessimistic mood he thought that if Jeanne recovered her property
within a year, she would be lucky.

What a wonderful creature was Jeanne! He shut his eyes to the blue sky
and pictured her as she stood in the light, on the ragged escarpment,
with her garments beaten by wind and rain. And he remembered the weary
thud, thud of railway and steamer, which had resolved itself, like the