In vain he hauled on the bit reins; the maddened creature was beyond all human control. The shout of warning from the men behind him died away. The trampled wood and the shell-torn grassland merged into a confused carpet of greeny white beneath him. She took an empty trench in her stride without checking perceptibly, until a crater yawned before them, into which she plunged, tried gamely to keep her feet, and finally rolled over and over to the bottom, flinging her rider clear as she fell dead. CHAPTER XXVI Under the German Eagle Dennis picked himself up with a sob of bitter disappointment, as he realised that the dead mare, which had carried him for a brief moment among his own people, had now landed him once more a good mile within the enemy's lines. His first act was to bury the sergeant's sword in the earth; his next to reload his Webley revolver; and then, spying a gap in the rim of the crater above him, he clambered up, to find himself on the floor of a German trench! Not twenty yards away men were busy with pick and shovel, making good the effect of the shell explosion on their parapet; and on the impulse of the moment he dived unseen into the mouth of a dug-out immediately in front of him. It was empty, but a brazier was burning under a cooking-pot, and on one side of the wall of the unspeakably filthy place hung a row of uniforms. "I shall never get out of it in these togs," he thought, looking ruefully at his own tattered rags; and with no very fixed idea of what to do or how to do it, he put on the first tunic he found, drew a pair of baggy slops over his own gaiters and breeches, and crammed a forage cap, with a red band and cockade, on to his head. Something bulky in the pocket of the tunic attracted his attention. It was a book, half filled with German shorthand notes, and on the fly-leaf was inscribed the name--"Carl Heft, 307th Reserve Battalion." Carl Heft was evidently a stenographer, and to the lad's horror he heard a harsh voice calling out the name. "Great Scott! What have I done now?" he thought. And as a black-whiskered sergeant loomed in the doorway of the dug-out, he clicked his heels together in the approved German fashion, and stood stolidly to attention. "What are you skulking here for, Heft?" demanded the sergeant angrily. "Come along, pig's head--the general wants you!" Dennis stepped briskly forward without a word, fastening the last button on the soiled tunic as he reached the open air. "They're either in a high state of nerves, or I must be something like the real Carl Heft," he thought. "Not very flattering to one's vanity, but it might be useful, who knows? What on earth is going to happen now? I'm perfectly certain to give the show away this time."