Never does he pull off one of these "victorious retreats" of his but he needs must spoil the effect by leaving behind all sorts of puerile booby traps, butter-slides, etc., for the annoyance of the on-sweeping vanquished, displaying a state of mind which is usually slippered out of one at a dame school. Most of his practical jokes are of the fifth of November order and detonate by means of a neat arrangement of springs, wire and acid contained in a small metal cylinder. You open a door and the attached house blows away all round it, leaving the door in your damaged hand. You step on a duckboard; something goes bang! and the duckboard ups and hits you for a boundary to leg--and so on, all kinds of diversions. Of course you don't really open doors and prance on duckboards; that's only what he (Jerry) in his simple faith imagines you will do. In reality you revive memories of the days when as a small boy you tied trip-strings in dark passages and balanced water-jugs on door-tops; and all the Boche's elementary parlour-tricks immediately become revealed unto you. Not long ago the Hun, thirsting for yet more imperishable laurels, made a sudden masterly manoeuvre towards the East. Our amateur Staff instantly fell into the trap, and when battle joined again we found we had been lured twenty miles nearer Germany. The Hun had not left things very comfortable for us; most of the cover had been blown up, and there was the usual generous provision of booby traps lying about dumbly pleading to be touched off. However, we sheltered in odd holes and corners, scrounged about for what we could "souvenir" and made ourselves as snug as possible. It was while riding out alone on one of these souveniring expeditions that our William came upon a chaff-cutter standing in what had once been the stable yard of what had once been a château. Now to a mounted unit a chaff-cutter is a thing of incredible value. It is to us what a mincing-machine is to the frugal housewife. Our own cutter was with the baggage, miles away in the rear, and likely to remain there. William slipped off his horse and approached the thing gingerly. It was a Boche engine, evidently quite new and in excellent trim. This was altogether too good to be true; there must be a catch somewhere. William withdrew twenty yards and hurled a brick at it--two, three, four bricks. Nothing happened. He approached again and tying one end of a wrecked telephone wire to it, retired behind a heap of rubble and tugged. The chaff-cutter rocked to and fro and finally fell over on its side without anything untoward occurring. William, wiping beads from his brow, came out of cover. There was no catch in it after all. It was a perfectly genuine bit of treasure-trove. The Skipper would pat his curly head, say "Good boy," and exalt him above all the other subalterns. _Bon_--very _bon_!