"Ha, good! All quiet here, my lads?"
"All quiet, sir," answered the corporal, scrambling up.
"That's all right. Good night, corporal." And the martial little figure disappeared round the corner.
Now the corporal was new in that bit of the line; to be exact, he had just returned from leave. That was one cause.
"Look out—oil-can!" The sentry gave a hail, and every one ducked. That was the other cause.
For at the precise moment that an oil-can exploded with a thunderous crump twenty yards or so beyond the trench, there was a sudden noise of ripping canvas, an agonised shout, and the heavy crash of a body encountering china. Then—silence. The sap parties heard only the oil-can; Percy FitzPercy for a wonder was not brooding over his invention, and there was no one who knew that close beside them in an odoriferous underground abode the Brigadier-General lay completely stunned, with his head in a metal soup tureen and his rather extensive set of uppers in a disused tin hitherto devoted to that painstaking gentleman, Mr. Maconochie.
Up to this point it will be willingly conceded, I think, by any one acquainted with trench etiquette that the unfortunate predicament of Herbert Firebrace, General and Great One, was only what he deserved. To depart so flagrantly from the spirit of the rules as to wander round front-line trenches alone and in the falling shades of night is asking for trouble; and if the matter had ended there I have
