He held the pocket open, and shook out its contents on to the table cloth—two faded slips of pinkish paper. "These don’t look very promising," he said. "Field telegraph despatches!" He unfolded the first slip, smoothed it out, and read aloud: _The expression "Dud" will no longer be employed in Official Correspondence._ He laughed. "There’s Staff work for you!" "Eric—!" I began suddenly. Some inward monitor had jerked an alarm-cord in my brain. Where had I heard that message before? And in conjunction with what? I leaned across the table and stretched out my hand; but already Eric had unfolded the second despatch, and was smoothing it out with the wrist of his artificial arm. I noticed that a covering slip was pinned to the despatch. _Passed to you_, read Eric—_for immediate compliance, please.—J. E. F._ "That was old Forrester, the Brigade Major. It sounds quite urgent; I wonder what it is all about." "Eric—!" I said again. Then, suddenly, I held my peace. Who was I, to interfere with God? "Hallo," continued Eric—"here’s my name!" _Lieutenant-Colonel E. F. B. Bethune, D.S.O., Commanding Second Battalion Royal Covenanters—_ He stopped suddenly—as I knew he would. I looked up, and watched his face go white, as he read the message to the end. I saw him re-read it, again and again. Then he examined the date, and hour of despatch. Then came a long, deathly silence. At last he lifted his face to me—the face of a man suddenly aged. He pushed the pink slip in my direction. "Have you ever seen that before?" he asked, in a hoarse voice. I read the message mechanically through, though I knew it by heart. It said: _Lt.-Col E. F. B. Bethune, D.S.O., Commanding Second Battalion, Royal Covenanters, will return home forthwith, and report to War Office._ *CHAPTER XXIII* *THE SOUL OF ERIC BETHUNE* How long we sat there I do not know. But at last I was conscious that Eric was speaking again. "When did Roy Birnie get this?" "Immediately after you had moved off with the battalion—that afternoon at Caterpillar Farm, before the Somme show. He and I stayed to clear up, you remember?" "Yes, yes!" he muttered, staring at the paper. "I remember. But—but why didn’t he give it to me? Didn’t he realise what it meant?" "Yes, he realised all right. That was why he didn’t give it to you." Eric took up the despatch in his shaking hand. "Roy Birnie deliberately held that back?" he said. I nodded. "And you?" "Don’t ask me about it," I replied, lighting my pipe and feeling thoroughly uncomfortable. "It’s no part of a second-in-command’s duty to supervise the adjutant’s correspondence." "But—didn’t he show it to you?" "Now you ask me, he did." "But—but—it would have put you in command of the battalion!"