‘Ach, so!’ came in a low voice through the fog; and, moving diagonally away from them, roughly in the direction of their own trenches, they saw the vague silhouettes of a German patrol. Crouching, but ready with shot or steel, they watched the vague shadows moving away in the mist. The enemy were apparently at a disadvantage in the matter of light. They were on slightly higher ground, inclined away from them; and not giving a thought to the possibility of a party of Englishmen being actually between them and their own trenches, they were searching ahead of them in what seemed the only direction from which danger might be expected. Bourne thought that the mere breathing of his companions would be sufficient to give them away, and, while he restrained his own, he felt an insane desire to laugh.

The enemy patrol faded again into the fog, from which they had never completely emerged; and when, after listening intently, one ceased to hear them, Mr Finch, turning to them with a grin over his shoulder, beckoned for them to follow him. They continued for a little way along the wire, and then doubled back to their own trenches, passing over the vestiges of a ruined hovel. Apparently it had been one of those mud-walled affairs, with nothing very solid about it but a brick-built chimney; and already it was practically merged in earth again; though the smoke-blackened bricks, most of them not only broken but pulverized, still resisted utter dissolution, and rose in a crescent-shaped heap a few feet from the surface of the ground. At a very little distance it might be taken for a slight hump in the earth.

They were well pleased with themselves on their return, and still more pleased to hear, later, that a Hun patrol reconnoitring their wire in the mist had been fired on, and had withdrawn, with what casualties it was impossible to say. The one thing they professed to regret was that Mr Finch had restrained them from attacking the enemy patrol; but for him, they would have got the lot, they asserted; and if their dissatisfaction on that point ever reached the ears of Mr Finch, he probably smiled and said nothing, because he was quite pleased, too, and wise beyond his years.

The rain continued, broken only by intervals of mist or fog, and spells of cold, which became more intense as the weeks drew on into November. The relay-post at Colincamps was abandoned; and they took their messages direct from the trenches to Courcelles. During one tour in the trenches Bourne was attached to Brigade, and took possession of a tent just outside Brigade Headquarters. It contained one bed, of the wooden frame and rabbit wire type, and Bourne placed his things on the bed, establishing a claim to it. Presently a large Jock, who described himself later as a native of Pe’er’ead, as though it were a place of which everybody must have heard, came into the tent, and looked at Bourne’s things on the bed with displeasure.