But how to get it home? For you cannot carry full-grown chaff-cutters about in your breeches pockets. For one thing it spoils the set of your pants. He must get a limber. Yes, but how? The country was quick with other cavalrymen all in the souvenir business. If he left the chaff-cutter in order to fetch a limber, one of them would be sure to snap it up. On the other hand, if he waited for a limber to come trotting up of its own sweet will he might conceivably wait for the rest of the War. Limbers (G.S. Mule) are not fairy coaches. Our William was up against it. He plunged his hands into his tunic-pockets and commenced to stride up and down, thinking to the best of his ability. In pocketing his right hand he encountered some hard object. On drawing the object forth he discovered it to be his mother's gift. William's mother, under the impression that her son spends most of his time lying wounded and starving out in No-man's land, keeps him liberally supplied with tabloid meals to sustain him on these occasions--herds of bison corralled into one lozenge, the juice of myriad kine concentrated in a single capsule. This particular gift was of peppermints (warranted to assuage thirst for weeks on end). But it was not the peppermints that engaged William's young fancy; it was the container, small, metal, cylindrical. His inspiration took fire. He set the tin under the chaff-cutter, chopped off a yard of telephone wire, buried one end in peppermints, twisted the other about the leg of the cutter, mounted his horse and rode for dear life. When he returned with the limber an hour later, he found three cavalrymen, two horse-gunners and a transporteer grouped at a respectful radius round the chaff-cutter, daring each other to jerk the wire. When William stepped boldly forward and jerked the wire they all flung themselves to earth and covered their heads. When nothing happened and he coolly proceeded to load the cutter on the limber they all sat up again and took notice. When he picked up the tin and offered them some peppermints they mounted their horses and rode away. XXXV THE PHANTOM ARMY I can readily believe that war as performed by Messieurs our ancestors was quite good fun. You dressed up in feathers and hardware--like something between an Indian game-cock and a tank--and caracoled about the country on a cart-horse, kissing your hand to balconies and making very liberal expenses out of any fat (and unarmed) burgesses that happened along. With the first frost you went into winter quarters--i.e. you turned into the most convenient castle and whiled away the dark months roasting chestnuts at a log fire, entertaining the ladies with quips, conundrums and selections on the harpsichord and vying with the jester in the composition of Limericks.