“I did,” said Keede, and he explained to me: “Grant had the Second Sight--confound him! It upset the men. I was glad when he got pipped. What happened after that, Strangwick?” “Grant whispers to me: ‘Look, you damned Englishman. ’E’s for it.’ Uncle John was leanin’ up against the bay, an’ hummin’ that hymn I was tryin’ to tell you just now. He looked different all of a sudden--as if ’e’d got shaved. _I_ don’t know anything of these things, but I cautioned Grant as to his style of speakin’, if an officer ’ad ’eard him, an’ I went on. Passin’ Uncle John in the bay,’e nods an’ smiles, which he didn’t often, an’ he says, pocketin’ the paper: ‘This suits _me_. I’m for leaf on the twenty-first, too.’” “He said that to you, did he?” said Keede. “_Pre_cisely the same as passin’ the time o’ day. O’ course I returned the agreeable about hopin’ he’d get it, an’ in due course, I returned to ’Eadquarters. The thing ’ardly stayed in my mind a minute. That was the eleventh January--three days after I’d come back from leaf. You remember, sir, there wasn’t anythin’ doin’ either side round Sampoux the first part o’ the month. Jerry was gettin’ ready for his March Push, an’ as long as he kept quiet, we didn’t want to poke ’im up.” “I remember that,” said Keede. “But what about the Sergeant?” “I must have met him, on an’ off, I expect, goin’ up an’ down, through the ensuin’ days, but it didn’t stay in me mind. Why needed it? And on the twenty-first Jan., his name was on the leaf-paper when I went up to warn the leaf-men. I noticed _that_, o’ course. Now that very afternoon Jerry ’ad been tryin’ a new trench-mortar, an’ before our ’Eavies could out it, he’d got a stinker into a bay an’ mopped up ’alf a dozen. They were bringin’ ’em down when I went up to the supports, an’ that blocked Little Parrot, same as it always did. _You_ remember, sir?” “Rather! And there was that big machine-gun behind the Half-House waiting for you if you got out,” said Keede. “I remembered that too. But it was just on dark an’ the fog was comin’ off the Canal, so I hopped out of Little Parrot an’ cut across the open to where those four dead Warwicks are heaped up. But the fog turned me round, an’ the next thing I knew I was knee-over in that old ’alf-trench that runs west o’ Little Parrot into French End. I dropped into it--almost atop o’ the machine-gun platform by the side o’ the old sugar boiler an’ the two Zoo-ave skel’tons. That gave me my bearin’s, an’ so I went through French End, all up those missin’ duckboards, into Butcher’s Row where the _poy-looz_ was laid in six deep each side, an’ stuffed under the duckboards. It had froze tight, an’ the drippin’s had stopped, an’ the creakin’s had begun.” “Did that really worry you at the time?” Keede asked.