At the risk of discovery, the coward straightened and peered down into the white face ... Jim!

Harry Horton didn't remember anything very distinctly for a while after that, for his thoughts were much confused. But out of the chaos emerged the persistent instinct of self preservation. There was no use trying to find Jim's squad now. He wouldn't know them if he saw them. And how could he explain his absence with no wound to show? For a moment the desperate expedient occurred to him of thrusting himself through the leg with the bayonet. He even took Jim's weapon out of its scabbard. But the blue steel gave him a touch of the nausea that had come over him in the wheat field.... That wouldn't do. And what was the use? They had Harry Horton lying near death on the stretcher. What mattered what happened to the brother? There was no chance now to exchange identities. Perhaps there was never to be a chance.

He sank down again into the thicket, pulling the leaves about him. He would find a way. It could be managed. "Missing"—that was the safest way out.

That night, limping slightly, he emerged and made his way to the rear. It was ridiculously easy. Of the men he met he asked the way to the billets of the —th Regiment. But he didn't go where they told him. He followed their instructions until out of sight of them, and then went in the opposite direction.

He managed at last to get some food at a small farm house and under the pretext of having been sent to borrow peasant clothing for the Intelligence department, managed to get a pair of trousers, shirt, coat and hat. He had buried his rifle the night before and now when the opportunity came he dropped th