Chapter Twelve. I Become a Combatant Once More

Mr. Standfast

by John Buchan

I returned to France on 13 September, and took over my old brigade
on the 19th of the same month. We were shoved in at the Polygon Wood
on the 26th, and after four days got so badly mauled that we were
brought out to refit. On 7 October, very much to my surprise, I was
given command of a division and was on the fringes of the Ypres
fighting during the first days of November. From that front we were
hurried down to Cambrai in support, but came in only for the last
backwash of that singular battle. We held a bit of the St Quentin
sector till just before Christmas, when we had a spell of rest in
billets, which endured, so far as I was concerned, till the beginning
of January, when I was sent off on the errand which I shall presently
relate.

That is a brief summary of my military record in the latter part
Of 1917. I am not going to enlarge on the fighting. Except for the
days of the Polygon Wood it was neither very severe nor very
distinguished, and you will find it in the history books. What I
have to tell of here is my own personal quest, for all the time I was
living with my mind turned two ways. In the morasses of the
Haanebeek flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the
tortured uplands about Flesquieres, and in many other odd places I
kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would lie awake
thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-holes and many a
time I stepped off the duckboards, because my eyes were on a
different landscape. Nobody ever chewed a few wretched clues into
such a pulp as I did during those bleak months in Flanders and
Picardy.

For I had an instinct that the thing was desperately grave,
graver even than the battle before me. Russia had gone headlong to
the devil, Italy had taken it between the eyes and was still dizzy,
and our own prospects were none too bright. The Boche was getting
uppish and with some cause, and I foresaw a rocky time ahead till
America could line up with us in the field. It was the chance for
the Wild Birds, and I used to wake in a sweat to think what devilry
Ivery might be engineering. I believe I did my proper job reasonably
well, but I put in my most savage thinking over the other. I
remember how I used to go over every hour of every day from that June
night in the Cotswolds till my last meeting with Bullivant in London,
trying to find a new bearing. I should probably have got
brain-fever, if I hadn't had to spend most of my days and nights
fighting a stiffish battle with a very watchful Hun. That kept my
mind balanced, and I dare say it gave an edge to it; for during those
months I was lucky enough to hit on a better scent than Bullivant and
Macgillivray and Blenkiron, pulling a thousand wires in their London
offices.

I will set down in order of time the various incidents in this
private quest of mine. The first was my meeting with Geordie
Hamilton. It happened just after I rejoined the brigade, when I went
down to have a look at our Scots Fusilier battalion. The old brigade
had been roughly handled on 31st July, and had had to get heavy
drafts to come anywhere near strength. The Fusiliers especially were
almost a new lot, formed by joining our remnants to the remains of a
battalion in another division and bringing about a dozen officers
from the training unit at home. I inspected the men and my eyes
caught sight of a familiar face. I asked his name and the colonel
got it from the sergeant-major. It was Lance-Corporal George
Hamilton.

Now I wanted a new batman, and I resolved then and there to have
my old antagonist. That afternoon he reported to me at brigade
headquarters. As I looked at that solid bandy-legged figure,
standing as stiff to attention as a tobacconist's sign, his ugly face
hewn out of brown oak, his honest, sullen mouth, and his blue eyes
staring into vacancy, I knew I had got the man I wanted.

'Hamilton,' I said, 'you and I have met before.'

'Sirr?' came the mystified answer.

'Look at me, man, and tell me if you don't recognize me.'

He moved his eyes a fraction, in a respectful glance.

'Sirr, I don't mind of you.'

'Well, I'll refresh your memory. Do you remember the hall in
Newmilns Street and the meeting there? You had a fight with a man
outside, and got knocked down.'

He made no answer, but his colour deepened.

'And a fortnight later in a public-house in Muirtown you saw the
same man, and gave him the chase of his life.'

I could see his mouth set, for visions of the penalties laid
down by the King's Regulations for striking an officer must have
crossed his mind. But he never budged.

'Look me in the face, man,' I said. 'Do you remember me
now?'

He did as he was bid.

'Sirr, I mind of you.'

'Have you nothing more to say?'

He cleared his throat. 'Sirr, I did not ken I was hittin' an
officer.'

'Of course you didn't. You did perfectly right, and if the war
was over and we were both free men, I would give you a chance of
knocking me down here and now. That's got to wait. When you saw me
last I was serving my country, though you didn't know it. We're
serving together now, and you must get your revenge out of the Boche.
I'm going to make you my servant, for you and I have a pretty close
bond between us. What do you say to that?'

This time he looked me full in the face. His troubled eye
appraised me and was satisfied. 'I'm proud to be servant to ye,
sirr,' he said. Then out of his chest came a strangled chuckle, and
he forgot his discipline. 'Losh, but ye're the great lad!' He
recovered himself promptly, saluted, and marched off.

The second episode befell during our brief rest after the
Polygon Wood, when I had ridden down the line one afternoon to see a
friend in the Heavy Artillery. I was returning in the drizzle of
evening, clanking along the greasy path between the sad poplars, when
I struck a Labour company repairing the ravages of a Boche strafe
that morning. I wasn't very certain of my road and asked one of the
workers. He straightened himself and saluted, and I saw beneath a
disreputable cap the features of the man who had been with me in the
Coolin crevice.

I spoke a word to his sergeant, who fell him out, and he walked
a bit of the way with me.

'Great Scot, Wake, what brought you here?' I asked.

'Same thing as brought you. This rotten war.'

I had dismounted and was walking beside him, and I noticed that
his lean face had lost its pallor and that his eyes were less hot
than they used to be.

'You seem to thrive on it,' I said, for I did not know what to
say. A sudden shyness possessed me. Wake must have gone through
some violent cyclones of feeling before it came to this. He saw what
I was thinking and laughed in his sharp, ironical way.

'Don't flatter yourself you've made a convert. I think as I
always thought. But I came to the conclusion that since the fates
had made me a Government servant I might as well do my work somewhere
less cushioned than a chair in the Home Office ... Oh, no, it wasn't
a matter of principle. One kind of work's as good as another, and
I'm a better clerk than a navvy. With me it was self-indulgence: I
wanted fresh air and exercise.'

I looked at him - mud to the waist, and his hands all blistered
and cut with unaccustomed labour. I could realize what his
associates must mean to him, and how he would relish the rough
tonguing of non-coms.

'You're a confounded humbug,' I said. 'Why on earth didn't you
go into an O.T.C. and come out with a commission? They're easy
enough to get.'

'You mistake my case,' he said bitterly. 'I experienced no
sudden conviction about the justice of the war. I stand where I
always stood. I'm a non-combatant, and I wanted a change of civilian
work ... No, it wasn't any idiotic tribunal sent me here. I came of
my own free will, and I'm really rather enjoying myself.'

'It's a rough job for a man like you,' I said. 'Not so rough as
the fellows get in the trenches. I watched a battalion marching back
today and they looked like ghosts who had been years in muddy graves.
White faces and dazed eyes and leaden feet. Mine's a cushy job. I
like it best when the weather's foul. It cheats me into thinking I'm
doing my duty.'

I nodded towards a recent shell-hole. 'Much of that sort of
thing?'

'Now and then. We had a good dusting this morning. I can't say
I liked it at the time, but I like to look back on it. A sort of
moral anodyne.'

'I wonder what on earth the rest of your lot make of you?'

'They don't make anything. I'm not remarkable for my bonhomie.
They think I'm a prig - which I am. It doesn't amuse me to talk
about beer and women or listen to a gramophone or grouse about my
last meal. But I'm quite content, thank you. Sometimes I get a seat
in a corner of a Y.M.C.A. hut, and I've a book or two. My chief
affliction is the padre. He was up at Keble in my time, and, as one
of my colleagues puts it, wants to be "too bloody helpful". ... What
are you doing, Hannay? I see you're some kind of general. They're
pretty thick on the ground here.'

'I'm a sort of general. Soldiering in the Salient isn't the
softest of jobs, but I don't believe it's as tough as yours is for
you. D'you know, Wake, I wish I had you in my brigade. Trained or
untrained, you're a dashed stout-hearted fellow.'

He laughed with a trifle less acidity than usual. 'Almost thou
persuadest me to be combatant. No, thank you. I haven't the
courage, and besides there's my jolly old principles. All the same
I'd like to be near you. You're a good chap, and I've had the honour
to assist in your education ... I must be getting back, or the
sergeant will think I've bolted.'

We shook hands, and the last I saw of him was a figure saluting
stiffly in the wet twilight.

The third incident was trivial enough, though momentous in its
results. just before I got the division I had a bout of malaria. We
were in support in the Salient, in very uncomfortable trenches behind
Wieltje, and I spent three days on my back in a dug-out. Outside was
a blizzard of rain, and the water now and then came down the stairs
through the gas curtain and stood in pools at my bed foot. It wasn't
the merriest place to convalesce in, but I was as hard as nails at
the time and by the third day I was beginning to sit up and be
bored.

I read all my English papers twice and a big stack of German
ones which I used to have sent up by a friend in the G.H.Q.
Intelligence, who knew I liked to follow what the Boche was saying.
As I dozed and ruminated in the way a man does after fever, I was
struck by the tremendous display of one advertisement in the English
press. It was a thing called 'Gussiter's Deep-breathing System,'
which, according to its promoter, was a cure for every ill, mental,
moral, or physical, that man can suffer. Politicians, generals,
admirals, and music-hall artists all testified to the new life it had
opened up for them. I remember wondering what these sportsmen got
for their testimonies, and thinking I would write a spoof letter
myself to old Gussiter.

Then I picked up the German papers, and suddenly my eye caught
an advertisement of the same kind in the Frankfurter Zeitung. It was
not Gussiter this time, but one Weissmann, but his game was identical
- 'deep breathing'. The Hun style was different from the English -
all about the Goddess of Health, and the Nymphs of the Mountains, and
two quotations from Schiller. But the principle was the same.

That made me ponder a little, and I went carefully through the
whole batch. I found the advertisement in the Frankfurter and in one
or two rather obscure Volkstimmes and Volkszeitungs. I found it too
in Der Grosse Krieg, the official German propagandist picture- paper.
They were the same all but one, and that one had a bold variation,
for it contained four of the sentences used in the ordinary English
advertisement.

This struck me as fishy, and I started to write a letter to
Macgillivray pointing out what seemed to be a case of trading with
the enemy, and advising him to get on to Mr Gussiter's financial
backing. I thought he might find a Hun syndicate behind him. And
then I had another notion, which made me rewrite my letter.

I went through the papers again. The English ones which
contained the advertisement were all good, solid, bellicose organs;
the kind of thing no censorship would object to leaving the country.
I had before me a small sheaf of pacifist prints, and they had not
the advertisement. That might be for reasons of circulation, or it
might not. The German papers were either Radical or Socialist
publications, just the opposite of the English lot, except the Grosse
Krieg. Now we have a free press, and Germany has, strictly speaking,
none. All her journalistic indiscretions are calculated. Therefore
the Boche has no objection to his rags getting to enemy countries.
He wants it. He likes to see them quoted in columns headed 'Through
German Glasses', and made the text of articles showing what a good
democrat he is becoming.

As I puzzled over the subject, certain conclusions began to form
in my mind. The four identical sentences seemed to hint that 'Deep
Breathing' had Boche affiliations. Here was a chance of
communicating with the enemy which would defy the argus-eyed
gentlemen who examine the mails. What was to hinder Mr A at one end
writing an advertisement with a good cipher in it, and the paper
containing it getting into Germany by Holland in three days? Herr B
at the other end replied in the Frankfurter, and a few days later
shrewd editors and acute Intelligence officers - and Mr A - were
reading it in London, though only Mr A knew what it really meant.

It struck me as a bright idea, the sort of simple thing that
doesn't occur to clever people, and very rarely to the Boche. I
wished I was not in the middle of a battle, for I would have had a
try at investigating the cipher myself. I wrote a long letter to
Macgillivray putting my case, and then went to sleep. When I awoke I
reflected that it was a pretty thin argument, and would have stopped
the letter, if it hadn't gone off early by a ration party.

After that things began very slowly to happen. The first was
when Hamilton, having gone to Boulogne to fetch some mess- stores,
returned with the startling news that he had seen Gresson. He had not
heard his name, but described him dramatically to me as the wee
red-headed devil that kicked Ecky Brockie's knee yon time in Glesca,
sirr,' I recognized the description.

Gresson, it appeared, was joy-riding. He was with a party of
Labour delegates who had been met by two officers and carried off in
chars-a-bancs. Hamilton reported from inquiries among his friends
that this kind of visitor came weekly. I thought it a very sensible
notion on the Government's part, but I wondered how Gresson had been
selected. I had hoped that Macgillivray had weeks ago made a long
arm and quodded him. Perhaps they had too little evidence to hang
him, but he was the blackest sort of suspect and should have been
interned.

A week later I had occasion to be at G.H.Q. on business
connected with my new division. My friends in the Intelligence
allowed me to use the direct line to London, and I called up
Macgillivray. For ten minutes I had an exciting talk, for I had had
no news from that quarter since I left England. I heard that the
Portuguese Jew had escaped - had vanished from his native heather
when they went to get him. They had identified him as a German
professor of Celtic languages, who had held a chair in a Welsh
college - a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright, high-minded,
raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at all, but he
was kept under strict observation. When I asked about his crossing
to France, Macgillivray replied that that was part of their scheme.
I inquired if the visit had given them any clues, but I never got an
answer, for the line had to be cleared at that moment for the War
Office. I hunted up the man who had charge of these Labour visits,
and made friends with him. Gresson, he said, had been a quiet, well-
mannered, and most appreciative guest. He had wept tears on Vimy
Ridge, and - strictly against orders - had made a speech to some
troops he met on the Arras road about how British Labour was
remembering the Army in its prayers and sweating blood to make guns.
On the last day he had had a misadventure, for he got very sick on
the road - some kidney trouble that couldn't stand the jolting of the
car - and had to be left at a village and picked up by the party on
its way back. They found him better, but still shaky. I
cross-examined the particular officer in charge about that halt, and
learned that Gresson had been left alone in a peasant's cottage, for
he said he only needed to lie down. The place was the hamlet of
Eaucourt Sainte-Anne.

For several weeks that name stuck in my head. It had a
pleasant, quaint sound, and I wondered how Gresson had spent his
hours there. I hunted it up on the map, and promised myself to have
a look at it the next time we came out to rest. And then I forgot
about it till I heard the name mentioned again.

On 23rd October I had the bad luck, during a tour of my first-
line trenches, to stop a small shell-fragment with my head. It was a
close, misty day and I had taken off my tin hat to wipe my brow when
the thing happened. I got a long, shallow scalp wound which meant
nothing but bled a lot, and, as we were not in for any big move, the
M.O. sent me back to a clearing station to have it seen to. I was
three days in the place and, being perfectly well, had leisure to
look about me and reflect, so that I recall that time as a queer,
restful interlude in the infernal racket of war. I remember yet how
on my last night there a gale made the lamps swing and flicker, and
turned the grey-green canvas walls into a mass of mottled shadows.
The floor canvas was muddy from the tramping of many feet bringing in
the constant dribble of casualties from the line. In my tent there
was no one very bad at the time, except a boy with his shoulder
half-blown off by a whizz-bang, who lay in a drugged sleep at the far
end. The majority were influenza, bronchitis, and trench-fever -
waiting to be moved to the base, or convalescent and about to return
to their units.

A small group of us dined off tinned chicken, stewed fruit, and
radon cheese round the smoky stove, where two screens manufactured
from packing cases gave some protection against the draughts which
swept like young tornadoes down the tent. One man had been reading a
book called the Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and the talk turned on
the unexplainable things that happen to everybody once or twice in a
lifetime. I contributed a yarn about the men who went to look for
Kruger's treasure in the bushveld and got scared by a green
wildebeeste. It is a good yarn and I'll write it down some day. A
tall Highlander, who kept his slippered feet on the top of the stove,
and whose costume consisted of a kilt, a British warm, a grey
hospital dressing-gown, and four pairs of socks, told the story of
the Camerons at First Ypres, and of the Lowland subaltern who knew no
Gaelic and suddenly found himself encouraging his men with some
ancient Highland rigmarole. The poor chap had a racking bronchial
cough, which suggested that his country might well use him on some
warmer battle-ground than Flanders. He seemed a bit of a scholar and
explained the Cameron business in a lot of long words.

I remember how the talk meandered on as talk does when men are
idle and thinking about the next day. I didn't pay much attention,
for I was reflecting on a change I meant to make in one of my
battalion commands, when a fresh voice broke in. It belonged to a
Canadian captain from Winnipeg, a very silent fellow who smoked shag
tobacco.

'There's a lot of ghosts in this darned country,' he said.

Then he started to tell about what happened to him when his
division was last back in rest billets. He had a staff job and put
up with the divisional command at an old French chateau. They had
only a little bit of the house; the rest was shut up, but the
passages were so tortuous that it was difficult to keep from
wandering into the unoccupied part. One night, he said, he woke with
a mighty thirst, and, since he wasn't going to get cholera by
drinking the local water in his bedroom, he started out for the room
they messed in to try to pick up a whisky-and-soda. He couldn't find
it, though he knew the road like his own name. He admitted he might
have taken a wrong turning, but he didn't think so. Anyway he landed
in a passage which he had never seen before, and, since he had no
candle, he tried to retrace his steps. Again he went wrong, and
groped on till he saw a faint light which he thought must be the room
of the G.S.O., a good fellow and a friend of his. So he barged in,
and found a big, dim salon with two figures in it and a lamp burning
between them, and a queer, unpleasant smell about. He took a step
forward, and then he saw that the figures had no faces. That fairly
loosened his joints with fear, and he gave a cry. One of the two ran
towards him, the lamp went out, and the sickly scent caught suddenly
at his throat. After that he knew nothing till he awoke in his own
bed next morning with a splitting headache. He said he got the
General's permission and went over all the unoccupied part of the
house, but he couldn't find the room. Dust lay thick on everything,
and there was no sign of recent human presence.

I give the story as he told it in his drawling voice. 'I reckon
that was the genuine article in ghosts. You don't believe me and
conclude I was drunk? I wasn't. There isn't any drink concocted yet
that could lay me out like that. I just struck a crack in the old
universe and pushed my head outside. It may happen to you boys any
day.'

The Highlander began to argue with him, and I lost interest in
the talk. But one phrase brought me to attention. 'I'll give you
the name of the darned place, and next time you're around you can do
a bit of prospecting for yourself. It's called the Chateau of
Eaucourt Sainte-Anne, about seven kilometres from Douvecourt. If I
was purchasing real estate in this country I guess I'd give that
location a miss.'

After that I had a grim month, what with the finish of Third
Ypres and the hustles to Cambrai. By the middle of December we had
shaken down a bit, but the line my division held was not of our
choosing, and we had to keep a wary eye on the Boche doings. It was
a weary job, and I had no time to think of anything but the military
kind of intelligence - fixing the units against us from prisoners'
stories, organizing small raids, and keeping the Royal Flying Corps
busy. I was keen about the last, and I made several trips myself
over the lines with Archie Roylance, who had got his heart's desire
and by good luck belonged to the squadron just behind me. I said as
little as possible about this, for G.H.Q. did not encourage
divisional generals to practise such methods, though there was one
famous army commander who made a hobby of them. It was on one of
these trips that an incident occurred which brought my spell of
waiting on the bigger game to an end.

One dull December day, just after luncheon, Archie and I set out
to reconnoitre. You know the way that fogs in Picardy seem suddenly
to reek out of the ground and envelop the slopes like a shawl. That
was our luck this time. We had crossed the lines, flying very high,
and received the usual salute of Hun Archies. After a mile or two
the ground seemed to climb up to us, though we hadn't descended, and
presently we were in the heart of a cold, clinging mist. We dived
for several thousand feet, but the confounded thing grew thicker and
no sort of landmark could be found anywhere. I thought if we went on
at this rate we should hit a tree or a church steeple and be easy
fruit for the enemy.

The same thought must have been in Archie's mind, for he climbed
again. We got into a mortally cold zone, but the air was no clearer.
Thereupon he decided to head for home, and passed me word to work
out a compass course on the map. That was easier said than done, but
I had a rough notion of the rate we had travelled since we had
crossed the lines and I knew our original direction, so I did the
best I could. On we went for a bit, and then I began to get
doubtful. So did Archie. We dropped low down, but we could hear
none of the row that's always going on for a mile on each side of the
lines. The world was very eerie and deadly still, so still that
Archie and I could talk through the speaking-tube.

'We've mislaid this blamed battle,'he shouted.

'I think your rotten old compass has soured on us,' I
replied.

We decided that it wouldn't do to change direction, so we held
on the same course. I was getting as nervous as a kitten, chiefly
owing to the silence. It's not what you expect in the middle of a
battle-field ... I looked at the compass carefully and saw that it
was really crocked. Archie must have damaged it on a former flight
and forgotten to have it changed.

He had a very scared face when I pointed this out.

'Great God!' he croaked - for he had a fearsome cold - 'we're
either about Calais or near Paris or miles the wrong side of the
Boche line. What the devil are we to do?'

And then to put the lid on it his engine went wrong. It was the
same performance as on the Yorkshire moors, and seemed to be a
speciality of the Shark-Gladas type. But this time the end came
quick. We dived steeply, and I could see by Archie's grip on the
stick that he was going to have his work cut out to save our necks.
Save them he did, but not by much for we jolted down on the edge of a
ploughed field with a series of bumps that shook the teeth in my
head. It was the same dense, dripping fog, and we crawled out of the
old bus and bolted for cover like two ferreted rabbits.

Our refuge was the lee of a small copse.

'It's my opinion,' said Archie solemnly, 'that we're somewhere
about La Cateau. Tim Wilbraham got left there in the Retreat, and it
took him nine months to make the Dutch frontier. It's a giddy
prospect, sir.'

I sallied out to reconnoitre. At the other side of the wood was
a highway, and the fog so blanketed sound that I could not hear a man
on it till I saw his face. The first one I saw made me lie flat in
the covert ... For he was a German soldier, field-grey, forage cap,
red band and all, and he had a pick on his shoulder.

A second's reflection showed me that this was not final proof.
He might be one of our prisoners. But it was no place to take
chances. I went back to Archie, and the pair of us crossed the
ploughed field and struck the road farther on. There we saw a
farmer's cart with a woman and child in it. They looked French, but
melancholy, just what you would expect from the inhabitants of a
countryside in enemy occupation.

Then we came to the park wall of a great house, and saw dimly
the outlines of a cottage. Here sooner or later we would get proof
of our whereabouts, so we lay and shivered among the poplars of the
roadside. No one seemed abroad that afternoon. For a quarter of an
hour it was as quiet as the grave. Then came a sound of whistling,
and muffled steps.

'That's an Englishman,' said Archie joyfully. 'No Boche could
make such a beastly noise.'

He was right. The form of an Army Service Corps private emerged
from the mist, his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his
pockets, and his walk the walk of a free man. I never saw a welcomer
sight than that jam-merchant.

We stood up and greeted him. 'What's this place?' I shouted.

He raised a grubby hand to his forelock. 'Ockott Saint Anny,
sir,' he said. 'Beg pardon, sir, but you ain't hurt, sir?'

Ten minutes later I was having tea in the mess of an M.T.
workshop while Archie had gone to the nearest Signals to telephone
for a car and give instructions about his precious bus. It was
almost dark, but I gulped my tea and hastened out into the thick
dusk. For I wanted to have a look at the Chateau.

I found a big entrance with high stone pillars, but the iron
gates were locked and looked as if they had not been opened in the
memory of man. Knowing the way of such places, I hunted for the side
entrance and found a muddy road which led to the back of the house.
The front was evidently towards a kind of park; at the back was a
nest of outbuildings and a section of moat which looked very deep and
black in the winter twilight. This was crossed by a stone bridge
with a door at the end of it.

Clearly the Chateau was not being used for billets. There was
no sign of the British soldier; there was no sign of anything human.
I crept through the fog as noiselessly as if I trod on velvet, and I
hadn't even the company of my own footsteps. I remembered the
Canadian's ghost story, and concluded I would be imagining the same
sort of thing if I lived in such a place.

The door was bolted and padlocked. I turned along the side of
the moat, hoping to reach the house front, which was probably modern
and boasted a civilized entrance. There must be somebody in the
place, for one chimney was smoking. Presently the moat petered out,
and gave place to a cobbled causeway, but a wall, running at right
angles with the house, blocked my way. I had half a mind to go back
and hammer at the door, but I reflected that major-generals don't pay
visits to deserted chateaux at night without a reasonable errand. I
should look a fool in the eyes of some old concierge. The daylight
was almost gone, and I didn't wish to go groping about the house with
a candle.

But I wanted to see what was beyond the wall - one of those
whims that beset the soberest men. I rolled a dissolute water-butt
to the foot of it, and gingerly balanced myself on its rotten staves.
This gave me a grip on the flat brick top, and I pulled myself up.

I looked down on a little courtyard with another wall beyond it,
which shut off any view of the park. On the right was the Chateau,
on the left more outbuildings; the whole place was not more than
twenty yards each way. I was just about to retire by the road I had
come, for in spite of my fur coat it was uncommon chilly on that
perch, when I heard a key turn in the door in the Chateau wall
beneath me.

A lantern made a blur of light in the misty darkness. I saw
that the bearer was a woman, an oldish woman, round-shouldered like
most French peasants. In one hand she carried a leather bag, and she
moved so silently that she must have worn rubber boots. The light
was held level with her head and illumined her face. It was the
evillest thing I have ever beheld, for a horrible scar had puckered
the skin of the forehead and drawn up the eyebrows so that it looked
like some diabolical Chinese mask.

Slowly she padded across the yard, carrying the bag as gingerly
as if it had been an infant. She stopped at the door of one of the
outhouses and set down the lantern and her burden on the ground. From
her apron she drew something which looked like a gas-mask, and put it
over her head. She also put on a pair of long gauntlets. Then she
unlocked the door, picked up the lantern and went in. I heard the
key turn behind her.

Crouching on that wall, I felt a very ugly tremor run down my
spine. I had a glimpse of what the Canadian's ghost might have been.
That hag, hooded like some venomous snake, was too much for my
stomach. I dropped off the wall and ran - yes, ran till I reached
the highroad and saw the cheery headlights of a transport wagon, and
heard the honest speech of the British soldier. That restored me to
my senses, and made me feel every kind of a fool.

As I drove back to the line with Archie, I was black ashamed of
my funk. I told myself that I had seen only an old countrywoman
going to feed her hens. I convinced my reason, but I did not
convince the whole of me. An insensate dread of the place hung
around me, and I could only retrieve my self-respect by resolving to
return and explore every nook of it.