"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin. But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferte. We stopped there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in. We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly. No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported fit for duty. The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal twilight, and I sought to disperse it. "I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed to leave nothing to be desired. But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He will bear without repining everything but luxury. "One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about this New Army getting four bob?" "I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently. "Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks." "Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological formation and producing a startling chromatic effect. "Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?" My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. "Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!" A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round soon. Scoot, my sons." They scooted.