Hyldebrand rose fast in village popularity.  One forgot that his parents had been shot for cattle maiming, body snatching, breaking into granaries and defying the gendarmerie on the public roads.  But Hyldy was all docility.  He ate his way through the grant, the office stationery, and the central tin dump with the most disarming naivete.  He was the spoilt darling of every mess.  The reflected glory which Isinglass and myself enjoyed was positively embarrassing.

But as the summer advanced so did Hyldebrand.  He became (to quote his keeper) a “battle pig,” with the head of a pantomime dragon, fore-quarters of a bison, the hind-legs of a deer and a back like an heraldic scrubbing-brush.  In March I had inspected him as he sat upon my knee.  In June I shook hands with him as he strained at his tether.  In mid-September we nodded to each other from opposite sides of a barbed wire fence.  Yet Isinglass retained the most complete mastery of his ferocious-looking protege, and beneath his skilful massage Hyldebrand would throw himself upon the ground and guggle in a porcine ecstacy.

One sunny afternoon, when there had come upon the little village street the inevitable hush which preceded Hyldebrand’s hour for exercise, I espied the village cripple making for his home with the celerity of an A 1 man.  He glared reproachfully at me, and, with an exclamation of “Sacre sanglier!” vanished in the open doorway of the local boulangerie, that being nearer than his cottage.  Then came Hyldebrand, froth on his snout and murder in his little eyes, and after him Isinglass more than living up to his equine namesake.  I joined him, and, following Hyldy in a cloud of dust, the runner informed me between gasps that it was “along of burning his snout-raking for a bully-beef tin in the insinuator.”

A band outside B Mess was nearing the climax of GRIEG’S “Peer Gynt” suite.  Hyldebrand just failed to perpetrate the time-worn gag of jumping through the big drum, but he contrived to make that final crashing chord sound like the last sneeze of a giant dying of hay-fever.  The rest the crowd saw through a film of dust.  Hyldebrand headed for the turning by the school, reached it as the gates opened to release young France, and comedy would have turned to tragedy but for the point duty M.P. and his revolver.

There was a note and a parcel for me a day or so after.  The note, which was addressed to and had been opened by the T.M., stated that Hyldebrand was being sent for by the Heatherdale Hussars on the morrow.  Outside the parcel was scrawled, above the initials of the G.H.Q. officers’ cook, a friend of mine, “It’s top hole—­try it with a drop of sauce.”  Inside was a cold pork chop!

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[Illustration:  The new loaf.

Mr. Lloyd George.  “Lucky RHONDDA!  But I taught him those numbers.”]