It was one of the incidents of the Great Retreat. A flank battalion of British infantry, by some mishap, lost direction. Cut off from the main body, and fighting desperately, it was driven always further from the path along which safety lay, until at last, flinging itself into the forest of Terbeeke, for a whole day and night it held off the furious attacks of a brigade of Prussians. But the odds were too great. Slowly but surely the battalion was forced back through the forest to the very outskirts. Back from there, after another frantic assault, it reeled, reduced now to two sparse companies--some three hundred men in all---across the little edging of cornfields into the stricken streets of Terbeeke. There, at last, it found some respite. The Prussians, having learnt by bitter experience the fighting value of the "contemptible" little force arrayed against them, jibbed at the open frontal attack across bare plough-land, and remained hidden within the forest, awaiting reinforcements. Meanwhile the British remnant fought desperately to establish themselves within the village and turn every house into a citadel; while their commander, a lieutenant of something under twenty-one, racked his brain for some way of escape. At one time it might have been possible to skirt the northern edge of the marsh, but already the attacking Prussians had pushed forward, and the British were now enclosed within a triangle, formed as to its sides by the overwhelming Prussian force, and as to its base by the impassable fastnesses of the mere. "Unless something happens pretty quick," said the C.O. to his second-in-command, a boy of nineteen, "things are pretty considerably all U-P." (He said something to that effect, I mean. Madame Tavernier's narrative did not, of course, fill in such details.) They were standing in the porch of the old church, gazing disconsolately over the flat stretches of marshland. The Boche fire had temporarily ceased, and they devoted the respite to seeking some way by which the marsh might be crossed even at the eleventh hour. But there was none, or none which they could discern. "Wonder what they are waiting for?" said the boy, lighting a cigarette. "Bringing up the guns, of course. It will be dark in an hour." The young C.O. gazed hopelessly to where the sun was already dropping to the cloud-capped western horizon, straining with ominous red the reedy pools before them. "Moon will be up, though." "All the better for them. I should give the village another two hours. And then----" "You aren't going to surrender, surely?" There was the quiver of horror in the young voice. They were interrupted by the C.S.M. of B Company.