who had entered into the agreement with him; the driver was still on the animal’s back.  When the mule stuck his nose into the hot peelings he jerked backwards into the door of the cookhouse, the driver’s back struck the wall over the entrance and he was shot clean off the mule’s back head-foremost into the cesspool 10 feet away.  When I say that the bone-grinding department of a stockyard’s plant is pleasant compared to the odor of the mixture contained in the cesspool, some idea will be had of the driver’s condition when he was pulled out by Tompkins.  In the meantime, Scotty was standing in the cookhouse, laughing his sides out at the driver’s plight, and he had forgotten to notice that the mule was backing further and further into the room.  Just then Mr. Mule got his foot tangled up in one of the dixies that were lying on the floor, and in attempting to kick it off, his foot missed Scotty’s head by about six inches.  Scotty backed up and so did the mule, still kicking, each kick bringing his hoof nearer Scotty’s mug.

“Take your damn mule out,” he roared, but they returned the laugh on him and made no move.  The next kick brought the hoof and dixie within an inch of the cook’s skull and in desperation and fear for his life he slid sidewise under the mule’s belly and just escaped a vicious bite as he was getting out of the door.

What the mule did not do in that room to the dinner preparations was not worth doing and Scotty was peremptorily demoted for the loss of the men’s dinner and put to tending mules instead.  He had no more idea of caring for a mule than he had for performing a delicate operation on the brain and, as a consequence, when inspection day came around, the hip bones of the animals he had cared for could be used as a hat rack and the officer ordered them shot and buried.  The cook’s thrift again came to the front.  “Grant, I’ll tell ye what I’ll do, if ye’ll help me take the carcasses to an abattoir we’ll sell them for forty francs, and then we can dig a grave and let on we’ve buried them, and I’ll go half wi’ ye.  What do you say?” The scheme looked plausible enough to me and I consented, and I was the richer by 20 francs.

Owing to his misfortune with the mules the O.C. ordered him to report for duty on my gun and Scotty came into the lines with us the following week.  I was in charge of a trench mortar and our duty was to send over 8 or 10 shells, instantly take the gun to pieces and remove it to another position for the purpose of getting away from the return fire that Fritz was sure to send.  When the first 10 messages were sent across, I ordered all hands to take their respective parts and carry them to the point designated, I superintending the dismemberment of the gun.  When the last man, who happened to be Scotty, had taken away his respective part of the gun, I picked up the range-finder and started for the spot about a hundred yards off down the trench.  I had scarcely gone 10 yards when