"
"It won't do you any harm," I pleaded, "and it will give me a chance
to pay off a big debt."
"Right," he said, smiling; "carry on."
"Gentlemen," I said, "about this time a year ago I was commanding a
battery in France. It was during the bad days, and we were falling
back with the Hun pressing hard upon us. My guns had been firing all
the morning from a sunken road, when we got orders to limber up and
get back to a rear position. We hadn't had a bad time till then, a few
odd shells, but nothing that was meant especially for our benefit.
And then, just as we were getting away, they spotted us, and a battery
opened on us good and strong. By a mixture of good luck and great
effort we'd got all the guns away but one, when a shell landed just
in front of the leaders and knocked them both out with their driver;
at the same time the gun was jerked off the road into a muddy ditch.
Almost simultaneously another shell killed one of the wheelers, and
there we were with one horse left to get the gun out of the ditch and
along a road that was almost as bad as the ditch itself.
"It looked hopeless, and it was on the tip of my tongue to give orders
to abandon the gun, when suddenly out of the blue there appeared on
the bank above us a horse, looking unconcernedly down at us.
"In those days loose horses were straying all over the country, and
I took this to be one from another battery which had come to us for
company.
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