I was picked up for dead and a stretcher was sent for; but, while on the way, consciousness returned and in a few minutes I was able to navigate without assistance.  I then and there decided that I surely was preserved for France and was not doomed to die an ignominious or untimely death behind the front line trenches.

After supper that night I listened to the remarkable story of a man whose lot was destined to be woven with mine to a degree:—­“Aye, laddie, they came on thick at Mons!  There was one time there when there was only Sandy MacFarlane and mysel’ left out o’ the whole company, and for two or three hours we lay behind a wee bank, no higher’n your knee, fighting them off.  Lord how we plugged them!  They died like flies!  And then puir Sandy got his, an’ there was naething left for me tae do but tae beat an honorable retreat, an’ I grabbed Sandy’s rifle an’ retired on to the main body, wi’ the bullets buzzin’ like bees around me.  On my way back I loaded both rifles as quick as I could and dropped every noo an’ again to let them hae it, and I was carefu’ not to waste a damn shot; every bullet told.”

The speaker was Scotty Henderson, late of the Seaforth Highlanders, as he informed us, and he was relating his experiences during the world memorable retreat at Mons, when Britain’s little regular army, denominated by His Majesty, Wilhelm II, “The contemptible little English army,” was practically wiped out.

In the cookhouse we listened, open-mouthed, to the wonderful exploits of this Scotch fighting man.  “Were you wounded?” asked Lawrence.  “Aye, laddie, you’re damned right I was,” and he rolled up his trouser leg and exhibited a large, broad scar on the inside of his right leg.  “There’s where I got it.”

“That’s a funny looking wound,—­looks like a burn,” said Lawrence.

“You’re damned right it’s a burn,” said Scotty, “it was the shell that burned me as it grazed my leg.”

The probable reason, I thought, why the shell could graze the inside of one of his legs without injury to the other was because the fighter was blessed with a pair of bow-legs that couldn’t have stopped the proverbial pig in the proverbial alley.  In addition to this decided detraction from his manly beauty, he was short, squatty, thick-necked, a nose of the variety commonly known as a stub, and a couple of little eyes that had a constant twinkle, half-shrewd and half-humorous, the whole surmounted with a shock of shaggy red hair.  But these detractions from his beauty did not in the least lessen our admiration for his personal bravery; he was in our eyes a first-class fighting man; he had proven it by his work at Mons and had the scar to show for it.

“But how did you come to get into a Canadian unit?” asked another.