‘He hadn’t spotted us,’ he said under his breath; ‘he just took a chance at the trench.’

And Jakes looked at Bourne with a solemn face.

‘Don’t you trust the bastard,’ he said with pointed brevity.

Sergeant-Major Tozer with the relief came along the trench. They were a little overdue. When Jakes mentioned the sniper, the sergeant-major turned to Bourne.

‘Where do you reckon he is?’ he asked, quietly.

‘In that building-rubbish,’ answered Bourne, without conviction. ‘There’s a heap of bricks left, where the chimney collapsed: that’s where I think he is.’

‘You don’t want to think,’ was Tozer’s comment. ‘If Captain Marsden asks you anything about it, you want to be sure, see? They got Brigadier-General Bullock just about ’ere, an’ that will give our chaps a kind of interest in the matter.’

He spoke a few words to the men on the fire-step, and led the way towards the dug-out, Jakes and Bourne following him.

‘There’s a chance you’re right,’ said Tozer, without looking round; ‘an’ if so, I want ’im shifted.’

Stooping in turn, they felt for the steps with their feet. Two had given, from the wet, and had been converted into a muddy slide. A third of the way down, a blanket, frowsty with damp, shut off the starlight from them. Groping in darkness they found at the bottom another blanket, muffling the light within. As Bourne entered, his nostrils dilated at the reek, as though some instinct of a beast survived in him. Each of the guttering candles had a halo round it. The smoke from them, and tobacco, and acrid fumes from a brazier, could not mask the stale smell of unwashed men, and serges into which had soaked and dried the sweat of months. Some few men who were awake looked up as they entered, showing impassive faces, with hard, bright eyes. The majority slept, a little restlessly, and were scarcely more than shadows in the uncertain light.

About a third of the dug-out, which had two entrances, had been screened off from the rest by blankets; and there the officers had their quarters.

‘Captain Marsden wants to ask you something, Corporal,’ said Tozer. ‘Bourne, you’d better come, too.’

They passed behind the blankets, and Captain Marsden looked up, exactly as the men had done, and with the same impassive face and hard eyes, while Mr Sothern slept with the same frowning brows. They were all equally damned.

‘Corporal Jakes, sir,’ said the sergeant-major, by way of introduction.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Captain Marsden, a trace of anxiety vanishing from his face. ‘Corporal, when you were out on patrol with Mr Sothern, I hear that you saw a corporal dead in a shell-hole. Is that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Jakes, with no more than his usual solemnity; ‘’e were lyin’ ’ead down in a shell-’ole, with ’is feet on the rim. It were a fairly fresh ’ole, sir. Not much water in it.’

‘Ah,’ said Captain Marsden. ‘Did you know Corporal Evans, of D Company?’