The grey was of course hot on Baby’s track.  Seeing her plight I naturally pulled up, but he resented this strongly and rose straight on his hind legs.  Fearing he would over-balance, I quickly slacked the reins and leant forward on his neck.  But it was too late; that slippery mud was no place to try and regain a foothold, and over he came.  I just had time to slip off sideways, promptly lost my foothold and collapsed as well.  How I laughed!  There was Captain D. on one side of the canal vainly trying to capture his “wee red tourie” floating down stream, and Baby standing by with the mud dripping from her once glossy flanks; and on the other was I, sitting laughing helplessly in the mud, and the grey (now almost brown) softly nosing my cap and eyeing his beloved on the further bank with pained surprise!

To crown all, the train, which had come to a standstill, was by the irony of fate full of Scottish soldiers on their way up the line.  Such a bit of luck in the shape of a free cinema show had rarely come their way and they were bent on enjoying it to the fullest extent.  The fact that the officer now standing ruefully on the bank was in Tartan riding “troos” of course added to the piquancy of the situation.

The woman had come out of her cottage by this time and kept exclaiming at intervals, “Oh, la-la, Oh, la-la,” probably imagining that this mudbath was only a new pastime of the mad English.  She at last was kind enough to open the gate; and thither I led the grey and then across a plank bridge beyond, previously hidden from sight.

We scraped the mud off the saddles under a running fire of witty comments from the train.  I knew the whole thing had given them so much enjoyment that I bore them no illwill.  I could see their point of view so well, it must have been such fun to watch!  “Hoots, mon,” they called to the now thoroughly embarrassed D., as we mounted, “are ye no going to lift the lassie oop?” I was glad we were “oop” and away before the train started again, and as we trotted along the road, cries of “Guid luck to ye!” “May ye have a happy death!” (which is a regular north-country wish, and a very nice one when you come to think of it), followed us.  The batman eyed us suspiciously as we reached Fontinettes where he was waiting for the horses, and remarked that they seemed to have had a “bit roll.”  My topcoat I’m glad to say covered all traces of the “bit roll” I had indulged in on my own.  It was a great ride entirely.

One night for some reason I was unable to sleep—­a rare occurrence—­and bethought me of an exciting spy book, called the German Submarine Base, I had begun weeks before but had had no time to finish.  All was dead quiet with the exception of the distant steady boom of the guns, which one of course hardly noticed.  I had just got to the most thrilling part and was holding my breath from sheer excitement when whiz! sob! bang! and a shell went spinning over the huts.  For a moment I thought