The man was utterly brazen. I wrote to him that if he chose to send me the statement I had asked for, I should accept his doing so as an evidence that he was ashamed of the letter just quoted, and would regard it as never written. “Should I not hear from you,” I continued, “I shall be forced to assume that you experience no shame for having written so base a letter, and it will be my duty to forward that letter to your commanding officer.” Howard’s reply came by return:-- MR. FORBES,--You can button up your coat and take my letter round to the nearest _General’s_ quarters. The letter you desire you can have if you like.--Yours, HARRY HOWARD. He must have either been quite reckless, or what is known as a “barrack-room lawyer.” I let him be, as I was not sure that there is any military law under which he could have been punished. A comfortable man, Mr. Harry Howard, to be entrusted with the despatch of an all-important message at the critical moment of a campaign, while a spy who had “crossed the palm” was waiting round the corner! It was presently disclosed that this correspondence on the official side was from the first simply what the Germans expressively call “a blow on the water.” It began with a foregone conclusion. An influential friend conversant with the circumstances wrote to the authorities representing with a certain vigour that he considered the treatment I had met with to have been ungracious and unfair. He was told in reply that, “As the Secretary of State for War considers that civilians who attach themselves to an army ought not be deemed eligible for war medals, the adverse decision with regard to Mr. Forbes must remain untouched.” This is explicit, and therefore it would not have been in accordance with official tradition to have simply intimated the _à priori_ resolution to me when I sent in my claim. THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found within each story in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Pages 279 and 286 both used “Chapter IV”; in this eBook, the second one has been changed to “Chapter V”. End of Project Gutenberg's Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles, by Archibald Forbes