‘A ’ad yon kip las’ time a were ’ere,’ he said indignantly.

‘Did you?’ Bourne inquired with mild interest. ‘Well, you don’t expect your luck to last for ever, do you?’

A marked difference in their mode of speech seemed likely to increase the misunderstanding, and Bourne, rather ostentatiously drawing up his legs, and half reclining on the disputed piece of furniture, lit a cigarette, and waited for the situation to develop. The big Scotsman sat on the ground, and investigating the contents of his haversack, produced a lump of something wrapped in newspaper. It proved to be an extremely solid piece of plum cake: cutting it in two, he returned half to the newspaper, which he put back into the haversack, and, dividing the other portion in two, he held one piece out to Bourne.

‘Thanks,’ said Bourne, taking it.

One insuperable bar to conversation with a Scotsman is, that it is impossible to persuade him that an Englishman speaks English; but Bourne gave him a cigarette, and they smoked in what was at least an amiable silence. Then another Scotsman arrived, and Bourne’s responsibility ended.

He met the man from Pe’er’ead in the line that night. They were both taking back a midnight report to Brigade, and, on leaving the trenches, made a short cut skirting the eastern side of Colincamps. They passed behind several batteries, each with its tiny glow-worm lamp suspended from an upright rod. Passing over the crest of the hill they continued a little way down the reverse slope, and then decided to rest and smoke a cigarette. There was a tree there, undamaged, and they sat with their backs against it. Then, when they had finished their cigarette, the big Scotsman rose.

‘Let us no bide lang i’ this place, laddie. They’re aye shellin’ this tree at ane o’clock.’

Bourne laughed softly, glancing at his wristwatch, which said it was within a minute or so to one o’clock; and they set off to strike the road. They were within a few yards of it when a big shell landed at the foot of the tree, and left nothing of it but some slivers. They looked at each other in blank wonderment and hurried down the road.

‘Mon,’ said the Scotsman, after a long silence; ‘it were proveedential.’

Bourne was always amazed by the superstition and the sentimentality of the ordinary man; he thought both, forms of self-flattery.

‘You evidently suffer from second-sight,’ he said, ‘and you don’t know it.’

He became very bored by the monotony of those frequent journeys to and from the trenches. The attack remained a probability of the future, they never seemed to get any closer to it. Rumours floated among the men: it had been fixed for the day after tomorrow; it had been postponed again; it had been abandoned. They ceased to be fresh troops, becoming indeed, under the influence of bad weather, constant fatigues, and the strain of uncertainty, rather jaded. Nothing had been gained by delay. One rumour said that Hun prisoners, captured in a raid, had admitted that the Germans knew all about the proposed attack, having extracted the information from two British prisoners they had taken some weeks earlier.