Shand gives an inaudible assent.  The column is halted, and the scouts called up.  A brief command, and they disappear into the darkness, at the double.  C and D Companies give them five minutes start, and move on.  The road at this point runs past a low mossy wall, surmounted by a venerable yew hedge, clipped at intervals into the semblance of some heraldic monster.  Beyond the hedge, in the middle distance, looms a square and stately Georgian mansion, whose lights twinkle hospitably.

“I think, Shand,” suggests Mackintosh with more formality, now that he is approaching the scene of action, “that we might attack at two different points, each of us with his own company.  What is your opinion?”

The officer addressed makes no immediate reply.  His gaze is fixed upon the yew hedge, as if searching for gun positions or vulnerable points.  Presently, however, he turns away, and coming close to Captain Mackintosh, puts his lips to his left ear.  Mackintosh prepares his intellect for the reception of a pearl of strategy.

But Captain Shand merely announces, in his regulation whisper,—­

“Dam pretty girl lives in that house, old man!”

II

Private Peter Dunshie, scout, groping painfully and profanely through a close-growing wood, paused to unwind a clinging tendril from his bare knees.  As he bent down, his face came into sudden contact with a cold, wet, prickly bramble-bush, which promptly drew a loving but excoriating finger across his right cheek.

He started back, with a muffled exclamation.  Instantly there arose at his very feet the sound as of a motor-engine being wound up, and a flustered and protesting cock-pheasant hoisted itself tumultuously clear of the undergrowth and sailed away, shrieking, over the trees.

Finally, a hare, which had sat cowering in the bracken, hare-like, when it might have loped away, selected this, the one moment when it ought to have sat still, to bolt frantically between Peter’s bandy legs and speed away down a long moon-dappled avenue.

Private Dunshie, a prey to nervous shock, said what naturally rose to his lips.  To be frank, he said it several times.  He had spent the greater part of his life selling evening papers in the streets of Glasgow:  and the profession of journalism, though it breeds many virtues in its votaries, is entirely useless as a preparation for conditions either of silence or solitude.  Private Dunshie had no experience of either of these things, and consequently feared them both.  He was acutely afraid.  What he understood and appreciated was Argyle Street on a Saturday night.  That was life!  That was light!  That was civilisation!  As for creeping about in this uncanny wood, filled with noxious animals and adhesive vegetation—­well, Dunshie was heartily sorry that he had ever volunteered for service as a scout.  He had only done so, of course, because the post seemed to offer certain relaxations from the austerity of company routine—­a little more freedom of movement, a little less trench-digging, and a minimum of supervision.  He would have been thankful for a supervisor now!