Kentucky recovered himself first. He felt numbed all over except in his left side and arm, which pricked sharply and pulsed with pain at a movement. He opened his eyes slowly with a vague idea that he had been lying there for hours, and it was with intense amazement that he saw the black smoke of the burst still writhing and thinning against the sky, heard voices calling and asking was any one hurt, who was hit, did it catch any one. He called an answer feebly at first, then more strongly, and then as memory came back with a rush, loud and sharp, “Pug! are you there, Pug? _Pug!_” One or two men came groping and fumbling to him through the smoke, but he would not let them lift or touch him until they had searched for Pug. “He was just beside me,” he said eagerly. “He can’t be hurt badly. Do hunt for him, boys. It’s poor old Pug. Oh, _Pug_!” “H’lo, Kentuck ... you there?” came feebly back. With a wrench Kentucky was on his knees, staggered to his feet, and running to the voice. “Pug,” he said, stooping over the huddled figure. “You’re not hurt bad, are you, Pug, boy?” With clothing torn to rags, smeared and dripping with blood, with one leg twisted horribly under him, with a red cut gaping deep over one eye, Pug looked up and grinned weakly. “Orright,” he said; “I’m ... orright. But I tole you, Kentuck ... I tole you to touch wood.” A couple of stretcher-bearers hurried along, and when the damages were assessed it was found that Pug was badly hurt, with one leg smashed, with a score of minor wounds, of which one in the side and one in the breast might be serious. Kentucky had a broken hand, torn arm, lacerated shoulder, and a heavily bruised set of ribs. So Pug was lifted on to a stretcher, and Kentucky, asserting stoutly that he could walk and that there was no need to waste a precious stretcher on carrying him, had his wounds bandaged and started out alongside the bearers who carried Pug. The going was bad, and the unavoidable jolting and jerking as the bearers stumbled over the rough ground must have been sheer agony to the man on the stretcher. But no groan or whimper came from Pug’s tight lips, that he opened only to encourage Kentucky to keep on, to tell him it wouldn’t be far now, to ask the bearers to go slow to give Kentucky a chance to keep up. But it was no time or place to go slow. The shells were still screaming and bursting over and about the ground they were crossing, gusts of rifle bullets or lonely whimpering ones still whistled and hummed past. A fold in the ground brought them cover presently from the bullets, but not from the shells, and the bearers pushed doggedly on. Kentucky kept up with difficulty, for he was feeling weak and spent, and it was with a sigh of relief that he saw the bearers halt and put the stretcher down. “How do you feel, Pug?” he asked. “Bit sore,” said Pug with sturdy cheerfulness. “But it’s nothin’ too bad. But I wish we was outer this. We both got Blighty ones, Kentuck, an’ we’ll go ’ome together.