"And now, I thought to myself, maybe I'll never get back. All sorts of possibilities passed through my mind, and between this and the awful pain that throbbed all over me, I felt like as if I'd go mad. "It began to get dark and my patience got exhausted. Then the idea came into my head that I could maybe drag myself along with my hands a wee bit nearer our lines. I thought of your promise, Reuter, but I couldn't stay. A few of the lads around me pegged out one after the other, and it made me feel fair frenzied. "Do ye remember Stanley Stenning, an English fellow of C company? Weel, he crawled out a wee while before me. I've heard since that he was home, but minus a leg, but I haven't heard so far of any of the other wounded fellows that were in the nook with me. "Weel, to get back to my own experience. It was awful--the pain--it racked me through and through, as I tried to move ahead by the aid of my hands. I would take a grip on anything I could get hold of and drag myself on a wee bit at a time. I had managed to do about a hundred yards, when I seemed to sense that I had taken the wrong direction, and oh! how weak I was about that time--it's past telling. I just simply had to lie there--I couldn't drag myself another inch. "I remember seeing a few bushes about fifteen yards ahead--it seemed so far!--and at first I wished I could manage to get to them, thinking I might get out of the way of the enemy, should any of them come along. But after a few minutes I decided it was perhaps as well that I was exhausted, because if I got there and should lose consciousness, ye might not find me, and that it was just as weel I was in the open. So I tried to content myself, but it was maddening. "In dragging myself to this spot I passed here and there one of our lads--then again I would make out one of the Camerons--and Reuter, they were so--still! But I crawled on, and as the vision of the lass came to me, I felt braver, and made up my mind to hold out as long as I possibly could. "By this time it was night--the time seemed to drag so! Then I remember hearing the sound of some one moving about, and I was just in the act of calling for help when the thought flashed through my brain that maybe they were Germans; so I kept still. The sound soon died away. My! how often, since then, I've wished I _had_ called out. "I lay there wishing and hoping that I might be found before morning, but the hours dragged on. I was growing fainter and fainter, and more feverish.