The first night Harry was with the battalion Philpott had sent him up with a carrying-party to the Front Line, or thereabouts, fifty men and some engineering stuff of sorts, wiring trestles, barbed wire, or something. It was shell-hole country, no communication trenches or anything, and since there had been an attack recently, the Boche artillery was very active on the roads and back areas. Also there was the usual rotten valley to cross, with the hell of a barrage in it. So much these young braves conceded. Harry had started off with his party, had called at the Brigade Dump, and picked up the stuff. Later on some one rang up Brigade from the line and said no party had arrived. Brigade rang up Philpott, and he sent up the Assistant Adjutant to investigate. Somewhere in the Arras Road he had come upon Harry, with most of the party, _running down the road--towards the Dump--away from the line_. The stores were urgently needed at the front; they never got there. That was all. The court-martial was to-morrow. * * * * * Well, it was a black story, but I made one or two footnotes at once. _The very first night he was back._ The awful luck--the cruelty of it! Just back, in the condition of nerves I knew him to be in, with that first miserable feeling upon him, wondering probably why the hell he had driven himself out there, and praying to be let down easy for one night at least--and then to be sent straight up on a job like that, the job that had broken him before. And by Philpott! I seemed to see Philpott arranging that, with a kind of savage glee: 'Oh, here's Master Penrose again--well, he'd better take that party to-night--instead of Mr. Gibson....' And who was the Assistant Adjutant? God knows, if every working-party that went wrong meant a court-martial, there would be no officers left in the army; and if some busy-body had been at work.... 'Who's the Assistant Adjutant?' I asked. 'Fellow who was attached to Division--used to be in this battalion in your time, I believe--what's-his-name?--Burnett--Burnett--he rang up the Colonel and told him about it.' _Burnett!_ I groaned. The gods were against Harry indeed. Burnett had been away from the battalion for eighteen months, drifting about from odd job to odd job--Town Major here, Dump Officer there, never in the line.... Why the devil had he come back now to put his foot in it--and, perhaps----But I could not believe that. Stephenson's two young officers--Wallace and Brown--made no footnote, naturally. They had come out by the same draft as Harry, one from Sandhurst, the other from a cadet school; they were fresh, as Harry had been, and they had no mercy. And while I resented their tone, I tried to remember that they knew not Harry, and said nothing.