But Lincke, having been, till within the last year, a German pharmacist in a small way of business, had about as much idea of British (not to say German) military honour as he had of field operations. His training had consisted of three or four months in a Reserve of Officers Training Battalion, and he came out of it vibrant with the glory of two things—the German military system, and himself as reflecting a modest proportion of that glory. He was perfectly genial, self-satisfied, and common. On _appel_ he insisted on believing that he was dealing with a company of recruits on parade, and the long, shuffling, indifferent rows of British officers winced or laughed at his antics, according to the state of their nerves. He used to begin operations by a salute with the top half of his person inclined almost at right angles with the ground; some of the lighter spirits used to go one better and execute a complete _salaam_, and this, of course, made him querulous. He would recall to the senior officer on parade the great day when he and his brother officer-aspirants stood poker stiff at attention under inspection by one of the very biggest of the German Generals. “Scarcely a _pickelhaube_ moved.” That was his triumph—scarcely a _pickelhaube_ had moved. And so why could not now the British officers do likewise, instead of appearing on parade in dirty uniforms and without caps and saluting so raggedly? Oh it was too bad. He was of course a complete nonentity and disregarded alike by Niemeyer and the British, as well as by his non-commissioned officers. But even nonentities exercise awkward powers if placed in positions where they should not be, and Lincke, for all his mildness, was about as troublesome to deal with as a Junker of the real Prussian school. His pharmaceutical soul and his hopeless inability to understand the British point of view made him in fact a serious thorn in the flesh, as was evidenced in the wardrobe incident. Ultimately he crashed badly. He was in the habit of paying frequent visits to the tin room, nominally to inspect, actually to satisfy his craving for the sight of our English delicacies. He was insatiably inquisitive, as well as greedy, and used to spend hours together down in the cellars, questioning officers as to the contents and origin of particular tins. Finally there became reason to suspect him of something rather more serious than mere curiosity; a trap was set, and he was marked down by three witnesses in the act of abstracting tins from one of the shelves and putting them hurriedly in his pocket.