“Wha goes there?” whispered a hoarse voice almost in his ear.  It gave him quite an unpleasant start, but, suppressing his first inspiration, which was to say the Life Guards, he answered, “I’m a Mudlarker!”

“This iss the Seaforths in supporrt,” remarked the sentry; “ye’ll be in the firrst line, na doot.  Ye’ll hae to go back, an’ it’s the firrst turnin’ tae the left, an’ keep as strecht as ye can.”  The Highlander stepped back into the deeper shadows and the self-recruited Mudlarker continued his career.

He traversed what seemed to him an interminable number of trenches without encountering anyone.  There was a reason for this lack of companionship, but it did not at first appeal to his imagination.  Suddenly he was startled by the vicious “phut, phut, phut” of unpleasantly close shooting, and bullets began to splash and grease along the bottom of the trench, accompanied by the stutter of a machine gun.

Miraculously untouched, he slid over the parados and lay, sweating with fright, in the watery furrow of a turnip field.

The trench was one that was seldom used, being thoroughly exposed to enfilading fire.  At stated periods through the night a machine gun was turned on, a proceeding which, beyond gratifying the Huns, had no sort of effect.  Albert, in blissful ignorance of all such customs, floundered about amongst the turnips until he came across a Jack Johnson crater.  From this he emerged even wetter than before.  A little later he became mixed up with some barbed wire.  The more be tried to get away the more inextricably he became involved with it.  A star shell burst overhead, and a German sniper, seizing the chance of a lifetime, put in four rounds rapid fire.

Albert lost the lobe of an ear and had his breeches shot through, but he managed to escape from the wire and find another furrow.  Mere dampness no longer inconvenienced him, there were so many other things to think about.  He crawled stealthily on his hands and knees and found the barbed wire again.  At length he heard the welcome sound of voices.  He crawled faster until he became aware that the voices were not speaking English, This discovery turned him to stone.  For an hour—­perhaps two hours—­he remained as still as a hare in its form.

Suddenly, blurred and crouching figures appeared out of the night.  They moved quickly and silently.  One of them nearly trod upon his hand, but he was too dazed to think of committing himself to either speech or action.

“Give it ’em!” cried a voice a few seconds later, and the roar of the exploding bombs signified that it had been given.

Instantly pandemonium broke loose.  Machine gun and rapid rifle fire burst forth from the German front trenches, and streams of bullets swept over the intervening ground like a gigantic hail-storm; then some field batteries began to burst H.E. shrapnel above the disturbed area, while star shells and magnesium flares threw an uneven light over the whole scene.