Dicky stood in the twilight, half rain, half snow--one of the interminable waits for order, Boulding back in the ranks somewhere. The firing had died down and Dicky dropped his bridle rein to bang his arms about to get some blood stirring in them. One of the problems of life just now was why wet snow soaked through leather quicker than straight rain water; another was why letters from home always dragged around the wrong fronts before being delivered; another was how long was IT going to last; another was hot coffee. His mount had turned gently away in the thickening dusk, turned on his toe corks through the slush to follow a wind-blown leaf. Plop--a water-soaked trench-siding gave way, and Yorick disappeared into an unused pit. Dicky stared down into the inky dark. The beast snorted. A flashlamp was procured from one of Boulding’s lieutenants and Dicky found his way down into the trench. It became clear why Yorick couldn’t rise, even if unhurt. The trench bottom was a six-inch paste of water and clay. Holding the flashlight in front of him, Dicky approached the sprawled beast. Yorick looked like a monster in the process of being born out of the mud. There was something both humorous and hopeless about the gaunt lifted head that came up into the ray. And now Dicky discovered that Yorick’s left foreleg below the knee veered off suddenly to the left, at a decided angle from the way it should lie. Dicky felt alone in a harrowing under world. The leaf that had caused it all, or possibly one like it, protruded from the snaffle ring. Yorick had come up to his leaf all right, and then forgotten what he had gone after. “Pretty lucky old boy, you are,” Dicky said. “Work done, war over for you, nice warm ditch to lie up in at the last, and I’ve got to take all the responsibility.” He drew the pistol from his belt and placed it on the little twist of hair halfway between the eyes. “I ought to take the saddle off first, but I’m not going to. So long, old kid, and best luck.” The pistol banged in the dugout like a cannon cracker under a flower pot, and the voice of an American sentry above was heard to say: “Some fool’s blowed his head off, down there. Why in hell can’t a man be patient!” Dicky climbed up on the level ground, no sicker than before, but a trifle more tired.... He was chafed. Yorick had done some of it in the last four days, but not all. He was chafed in and out and over, chafed from his boots and belt and helmet, but especially from his key ring. This last had ground into him all day. He took it out now, as he waited for coffee. Meanwhile he edged as near as possible (without murdering anybody) to the trench stove Boulding’s cook had got going.