with chattering teeth.

"I wouldn't have missed it," said one of them, "but I don't want to go
through it again. It's absolutely infernal in those trenches, and the
enemy's shell-fire breaks one's nerves."

They were not ashamed to confess the terror that still shook them,
and wondered, like children, at the luck--the miracle of luck--which
had summoned them from their place in the firing-line to be the escort
of an officer to Paris, with safe seats in his motor-car.


8


For several weeks of the autumn while the British were at Soissons,
many of our officers and men came into Paris like this, on special
missions or on special leave, and along the boulevards one heard all
accents of the English tongue from John o' Groats to Land's End and
from Peckham Rye to Hackney Downs. The Kilties were the wonder
of Paris, and their knees were under the fire of a multitude of eyes as
they went swinging to the Gare du Nord The shopgirls of Paris
screamed with laughter at these brawny lads in "jupes," and
surrounded them with shameless mirth, while Jock grinned from ear
to ear and Sandy, more bashful, coloured to the roots of his fiery hair.
Cigarettes were showered into the hands of these soldier lads. They
could get drunk for nothing at the expense of English residents of
Paris--the jockeys from Chantilly, the bank clerks of the Imperial Club,
the bar loungers of the St. Petersbourg. The temptation was not
resisted with the courage of Christian martyrs. The Provost-Marshal