If there is one thing which the Scout Officer does not like, it is riding a horse. He almost admits that he cannot ride! The other day he met a friend. The friend had one quart bottle of Hennessey, three star. The Scout Officer made a thorough reconnaissance of the said bottle, and reported on same. A spirited report. Unhappily the C.O. ordered a road reconnaissance an hour later, and our Scout Officer had to ride a horse. The entire H.Q. sub-staff assisted him to mount, and the last we saw of Holmes-Watson, he was galloping down the road, sitting well on the horse’s neck, hands grasping the saddle tightly, rear and aft. Adown the cold November wind we heard his dulcet voice carolling: “I put my money on a bob-tailed nag!... Doo-dah ... Doo-dah! _I_ put my money on a bob-tailed nag; ... Doo-dah! ... Doo-dah!! ... _DEY!!!_” MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE Martha Beduys, in Belgium, was considered pretty, even handsome. Of that sturdy Flemish build so characteristic of Belgian women, in whom the soil seems to induce embonpoint, she was plump to stoutness. She was no mere girl; twenty-seven years had passed over her head when the war broke out, and she saw for the first time English soldiers in the little village that had always been her home. There was a great deal of excitement. As the oldest of seven sisters, Martha was the least excited, but the most calculating. The little baker’s shop behind the dull old church had always been a source of income, but never a means to the attainment of wealth. Martha had the soul of a shop-keeper, a thing which, in her father’s eyes, made her the pride of his household. Old Hans Beduys was a man of some strength of mind. His features were sharp and keen, his small, blue eyes had a glitter in them which seemed to accentuate their closeness to each other, and his hands--lean, knotted, claw-like--betokened his chief desire in life. Born of a German mother and a Belgian father, he had no particular love for the English. When the first British Tommy entered his shop and asked for bread, old Beduys looked him over as a butcher eyes a lamb led to the slaughter. He was calculating the weight in sous and francs. That night Beduys laid down the law to his family. “The girls will all buy new clothes,” he said, “for which I shall pay. They will make themselves agreeable to the English mercenaries, but”--with a snap of his blue eyes--“nothing more. The good God has sent us a harvest to reap; I say we shall reap it.” During the six months that followed the little shop behind the church teemed with life. The Beduys girls were glad enough to find men to talk to for the linguistic difficulty was soon overcome--to flirt with mildly, and in front of whom to show off their newly-acquired finery. From morn till dewy eve the shop was crowded, and occasionally an officer or two would dine in the back parlour, kiss Martha if they felt like it, and not worry much over a few sous change.