"A quarter of a mile further on I could hear the roaring and rumbling
myself without lying on the road.

"Light was breaking fast, but there were wisps and shreds of fog
blowing about which made observation exceedingly difficult. Still,
observation I was out to get, so, spreading my bobbery pack, I worked
closer and closer. Suddenly one of my patrol shrilled, 'There y'are,
Sir!' and I saw a monstrous shape loom for a moment through a thinning
of mist, and rock onwards into obscurity again.

"'It's an armoured car. I seed wheels under it,' gasped one groom.
'More like a blasted Dreadnought,' grunted another. 'Cheer-o, chaps,
the 'Un fleet 'as come out.' But nobody laughed or felt like laughing;
this mysterious monster, thundering westward wrapped in its barrage of
fog, was getting on our nerves."

The Horse-master paused and carefully removed the long ash from his
cigar.

"Then the mists rolled up and revealed what I at first took to be a
walking R.E. dump, but secondly discovered to be a common ordinary
domestic British steam-roller with 'LINCOLN URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL'
in dirty white lettering upon its fuel box, a mountain of duck-boards
stacked on the cab roof, railway sleepers, riveting stakes and odds
and ends of lumber tied on all over it. As I rode up an elderly head,
grimy and perspiring, was thrust between a couple of duck-boards and
nodded pleasantly to me. ''Ello,' it said, 'seen anythin' o' the
lads?'