A smart young corporal accompanied me to reconnoitre, and we went too far ahead, and were cut off in a part of the country thick with Uhlans. As we rode in the direction of ---- two wounded men were limping along, both with legs damaged, one from the Middlesex and the other Lancashire Fusiliers, and so we took them up. The men were hungry and tattered to shreds with fighting, but in fine spirits. We soon came across a small village, and I found the curé a grand sportsman and full of pluck and hospitality. He seemed charmed to find a friend who was English, and told me that the Germans were dressed in the uniforms of British soldiers, which they took from the dead and from prisoners in order to deceive French villagers, who in many places in that district had welcomed these wolves in sheep’s clothing. We were warned that the enemy would be sure to track us up to the village. The curé said he could hide the two wounded men in the crypt of his church, and put up beds for them. It has a secret trapdoor, and was an ancient treasure-house of a feudal lord, whose castle we saw in ruins at the top of the hill close by. Then he hid away our saddlery and uniforms in the roof of a barn, and insisted upon our making a rest-chamber of the tower of his church, which was approached by a ladder, which we were to pull up to the belfry as soon as we got there. He smuggled in wine and meat and bread and cakes, fruit and cigarettes, with plenty of bedding pulled up by a rope. We slept soundly, and the owls seemed the only other tenants, who resented our intrusion. No troops passed through the village that night. In the morning the curé came round at six o’clock, and we heard him say Mass. After that we let down the ladder, and he came up with delicious hot chocolate and a basket of rolls and butter. Our horses he had placed in different stables a mile apart, and put French “fittings” on them, so as to deceive the enemy: _A Non-Commissioned Officer in the Dragoons_. After the Battle