’You’re coming on my staff.  You’re a stout fellow and I can’t do without you.’

‘Remember I won’t fight.’

’You won’t be asked to.  We’re trying to stem the tide which wants to roll to the sea.  You know how the Boche behaves in occupied country, and Mary’s in Amiens.’

At that news he shut his lips.

‘Still—­’ he began.

‘Still,’ I said.  ’I don’t ask you to forfeit one of your blessed principles.  You needn’t fire a shot.  But I want a man to carry orders for me, for we haven’t a line any more, only a lot of blobs like quicksilver.  I want a clever man for the job and a brave one, and I know that you’re not afraid.’

‘No,’ he said.  ‘I don’t think I am—­much.  Well.  I’m content!’

I started Blenkiron off in a car for Corps Headquarters, and in the afternoon took the road myself.  I knew every inch of the country—­the lift of the hill east of Amiens, the Roman highway that ran straight as an arrow to St Quentin, the marshy lagoons of the Somme, and that broad strip of land wasted by battle between Dompierre and Peronne.  I had come to Amiens through it in January, for I had been up to the line before I left for Paris, and then it had been a peaceful place, with peasants tilling their fields, and new buildings going up on the old battle-field, and carpenters busy at cottage roofs, and scarcely a transport waggon on the road to remind one of war.  Now the main route was choked like the Albert road when the Somme battle first began—­troops going up and troops coming down, the latter in the last stage of weariness; a ceaseless traffic of ambulances one way and ammunition waggons the other; busy staff cars trying to worm a way through the mass; strings of gun horses, oddments of cavalry, and here and there blue French uniforms.  All that I had seen before; but one thing was new to me.  Little country carts with sad-faced women and mystified children in them and piles of household plenishing were creeping westward, or stood waiting at village doors.  Beside these tramped old men and boys, mostly in their Sunday best as if they were going to church.  I had never seen the sight before, for I had never seen the British Army falling back.  The dam which held up the waters had broken and the dwellers in the valley were trying to save their pitiful little treasures.  And over everything, horse and man, cart and wheelbarrow, road and tillage, lay the white March dust, the sky was blue as June, small birds were busy in the copses, and in the corners of abandoned gardens I had a glimpse of the first violets.

Presently as we topped a rise we came within full noise of the guns.  That, too, was new to me, for it was no ordinary bombardment.  There was a special quality in the sound, something ragged, straggling, intermittent, which I had never heard before.  It was the sign of open warfare and a moving battle.