The Brown Brethren. Patrick MacGill

listeners of an angry cat spitting. His cheeks were puffed out and his nose was sinking out of sight. The landlord rolled from side to side choking almost, even the patronne was smiling. The little ragged girl came across the floor and stood in front of Fitz, her hands behind her back. For a moment she stood thus, then she ran away giggling and hid behind the counter. Fitzgerald got to his feet.

      "Bubb, Spudhole or whatever the devil they call you, you've won," he said. "What a queer creature that child is, boys," he muttered, looking at the youngster which was peeping slyly out from behind the counter. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

      Bubb approached the counter and drank the glass of vin rouge which Benners had paid for; then he thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and began to sing "Sam Hall."

      "My name is Samuel Hall,

       Tiddy fol lol, tiddy fol lol!"

      "Bowdlerise it, you fool," Fitzgerald exclaimed sitting down again. "Bowdlerise the song or stop singing. Bad taste, Bubb, bad taste. Drink doesn't improve your morals."

      Bubb ceased singing, not on Fitzgerald's behest, but because the sergeant was standing him a drink. Old Jean Lacroix who was slowly recovering from his fit of laughter turned to Fitzgerald.

      "The Bosche broke through up by Souchez last night," he said, pointing a fat thumb towards the locality of the firing line. "He broke through in hundreds. He is unable to get back now and he is roving all over the country."

      "They haven't been captured?" said Fitzgerald.

       "Some of them," said Jean. "Most of them perhaps, but not all. Last night they were about here."

      "Here?" enquired Fitzgerald. "Did you see them?"

      "Have I seen them?" asked Jean, shivering with laughter. "They can't be seen. They disguise themselves as turnips, as bushes, as English soldiers. … Last night two of your countrymen, soldiers, left here at nine o'clock; and got killed."

      Jean paused.

      "Where were they killed?" asked Fitzgerald.

      "You are billeted at Y—— Farm, are you not?" enquired the innkeeper. "You are. Then you came along the road to-night coming here. Did you see a ruined cottage on your right, a little distance back from the road?"

      "A mile from here?" said Fitzgerald. "Yes, we saw it."

      "That is where it happened," said Jean Lacroix. "The two soldiers were found there this morning with their throats cut, lying on the floor."

      Fitzgerald got to his feet and entered an outer room. There he found a copy of an English magazine lying on a chair. He picked it up and presently was deep in an article which tried to prove that war would be a thing of the past if Prussia ceased to exist. When he had finished reading he came back to the man by the stove and found him sitting there all alone, his eyes fixed on the flames. Benners was not there, he had left, accompanied by Spudhole and the sergeant. The farm in which their company was billeted was some two miles off.

      Fitzgerald looked at his watch and saw that it was nine o'clock.

      "Nine o'clock," he said aloud, and something familiar in the words struck him. Two soldiers left the wine shop the night previous at nine o'clock and next morning they were discovered lying in a ruined cottage with their throats cut. None of the men now in the inn were billeted at Y—— Farm. Fitzgerald had to go home alone. He swung his bandolier over his shoulder, lifted his rifle from the table and went out into the night. The story which Jean Lacroix had told affected Fitzgerald strongly. A stranger in a new locality he was ready to give credence to any tale.

      Fitzgerald had seen very little of trench warfare. True, he had come out to France with his regiment in March of 1915 but then he got wounded on his first journey to the trenches and was sent back to England. He came out again in time to take part in the battle of Loos and got gassed in the charge. Followed a few weeks in the hospital at Versailles and then he was sent back to the trenches. He had seen a fortnight's trench warfare, done turns in listening patrol and sentry-go, before coming back with his battalion to Y—— Farm near the town of Cassel. So now, although first battalion man, he was in many ways a "rooky," one who was not as yet versed in the practices of modern warfare. Now, on the way back to his billet he thought of Jean Lacroix's story and a strange fit of nervousness laid hold of him. What might happen in the darkness he could not tell, and he wished that his mates had not gone leaving him to come back alone. They ought to have looked him up. He was annoyed with them. He was angry.

      The road stretched out in front a dull streak of grey, lined with ghostly poplars, that lost itself in the darkness ahead. The night was gloomy and chilly, a low weird wind crooned in the grass and a belated night-bird shrieked painfully in the sky above. Far out in front the carnage was in full swing, the red fury of war lit the line of battle and darts of flame, ghastly red, pierced the clouds in a hasty succession of short vicious stabs. Round Fitzgerald was the flat dead country, black and limitless, and over it from time to time swift flashes of light would rise and tremble in the gloom like will-o'-the-wisps over a churchyard. The sharp penetrating odour of dung was in the air, the night-breath of the low-lying land of Flanders.

      The shadows gathered round the man silently. One rushed in from the fields and took on an almost definite form on the roadway in front. He could not help gazing round from time to time and staring back along the road. What might be following! He was all alone, apart from his kind, isolated. One hand gripped tightly on his rifle and the fingers of the other fumbled at his bandolier. He ran his hand over the cartridges, counting them aloud. Fifty rounds. But he had none in the magazine of his rifle. He should have five there. But he would not put them in now. He would make too much noise.

      He walked at a good steady pace; and hummed a tune under his breath, trying thus to keep down any disposition to shiver. His eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness could now take stock of the roadway, the grassy verge and the ditch on either side. The poplars rose high and became one with the sombre darkness of the sky. Shadows lurked in the ditches, bundled together and plotting some mischief towards him. His imagination conceived ghastly pictures of men lying flat in the shadows staring at the heavens with glazed, unseeing eyes, their throats cut across from ear to ear. … What a row his footsteps created! The noise he kicked up must have echoed across the world. He hummed a tune viciously and stared intensely into the remoter darkness of the unknown.

      The breeze whimpered amidst the poplar leaves and its sigh was carried ever so far away. Again a shadow swept up from the fields and took shape on the road in front. Fitzgerald advanced towards it quickly and collided with a solid mass, a living form.

      "I am sorry," he muttered.

      "Good evening," said a voice with a queer strange note in it. "You are out late."

      "I am going back to my billet now," Fitzgerald said, and asked: "Where are you going?" There was a moment's hesitation before the stranger replied, saying: "I'm going to the next village."

      Fitzgerald could now see that the man was dressed as an English soldier in a khaki uniform, a rifle over his shoulder and a bandolier round his chest. Germans often disguise themselves as British soldiers, Jean Lacroix said. …

      "What do you belong to?" Fitzgerald asked, stepping off after the momentary halt. The man accompanied him.

      "The Army Service Corps," he answered readily enough, but his accent struck Fitzgerald as being strangely unfamiliar; in his low guttural tones there was something foreign. English could not have been his mother tongue. For a while there was silence, but suddenly as if overcome by a sense of embarrassment due to the silence, the man spoke.

      "Have you been long in France?" he asked.

      "I have been here for some time," Fitzgerald answered.

      "What is your regiment?"

      Being warned against giving any information to strangers, Fitzgerald gave an evasive reply.

      "Oh, a line regiment," he said.

      The man chuckled. "Looks like it," he said. "Are you billeted here?"

      "I'm billeted at. … " Fitzgerald stopped and