Strongly suspecting by that time that if Scotty were anywhere on earth he was at the rear in the wagon line, I waited around the station just long enough to lend plausibility to my search before reporting to the O.C.  The Major was in a towering rage over our losses, and, damning the cook, he dismissed me.  The officers that night had to look to another cookhouse for their evening meal.

Next morning I was sent for by the Major and dispatched to the wagon lines on an errand;—­at that time I was fulfilling the duties of a runner for our unit;—­he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him.  I saluted and left.  The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left a minute ago.

“’E’s no slouch, that cook of yours,” he said, “’e’s a fighter, ’e is.”

“That so?”

“You’re right, ’e is.  Wy, where ’e was stationed, when the Germans rushed ’em in the trench, ’e ’eld ’em back, killin’ two of ’em single-handed until the others had retreated.  ’E ought to get the D.C.M., ’e ought; that’s what hi say.  By Gawd! when it comes to the real thing, give me the Scotch!  An’ honly last night ’e was in his cookhouse with some blighter by the name of Grant when the shells came along, and this fellow must have ’ad a streak of yellow for he promised to ’elp Scotty with the meal, but bolted like a bullet at the first shell.”

“How did he come to be down here?” I asked.

“Wy, he got relieved.”

“Where is he now?”

“Hover in the dugout.”

I learned that the hero of Mons had regaled them with accounts of his feats of valor in the trenches, very similar to the tales he had recounted to us at Salisbury Plain of his achievements in the Great Retreat, and the cook had given him a meal befitting a hero of his caliber, which Scotty had devoured with the relish and avidity of four heroes, while the others had shown him the due and necessary deference becoming a man of action.

For the benefit of the cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn’t stop until he had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved and that he would shortly have another tale to tell.

I hastened to the dugout he had indicated as Scotty’s retreat and found him in the innermost corner, pretending to be asleep; he didn’t answer until I called him three or four times.

“Scotty, the O.C. wants to know why you left the cookhouse without guard permitting some Algerians to eat up his bacon and stuff, and, further, why you ran away under fire.  You are in for hell as sure as there is heather in your hair.”  His countenance took on a greenish hue and he mumbled something about being shell-shocked and refused to come.  I persuaded him, however, to come over to the Quartermaster of the wagon line, and that officer asked him what he was doing there.