"One never knows," said Puzzeau in a deep bass whisper. "I want to hear you say again that you have forgiven me. Also, our old Commandant, who, thank the stars, is recovering, charged me that if ever you and I met I was to tell you——"
A dozen voices shouting "Corporal!" interrupted his speech, and with a despairing shrug of his huge shoulders the honest fellow ran after his men, leaving the Commandant's message undelivered.
At the edge of the wood he turned and waved his powerful arm, and as he vanished, Dennis, still rubbing his throat, stepped out briskly beside the German prisoners, who numbered eighty all told.
The big powerful brutes could have eaten their little guards, and Dennis with them, but they shambled along almost at a run, perfectly demoralised.
A short tramp across some ploughland, where brigades of active little men in blue-painted helmets were waiting, brought the prisoners to the French trenches, where Dennis had to run the gauntlet of half a dozen very wide awake but very polite officers, who passed him still farther to the rear.
He was long leagues from the British Army away to the north of the Somme, and was puzzling how on earth he was to join it, when an automobile dashed from a side road, hooting imperiously for him to get out of the way.
"Confound you!" said Dennis to himself as he jumped rather ignominiously on to the bank, but the car stopped, and the driver rose in his seat, looking back at him.
"No, monsieur—it is not possible! It cannot be the Lieutenant Dashwood, surely!" called out the young Frenchman, and instantly forgetting his annoyance, Dennis ran towards the car.
"What, Martique, my dear fellow! Will wonders never cease? It is indeed the Lieutenant Dashwood, as you call him, and in no end of a hat, too! How can I get back to our lines?"
The good-looking young Frenchman, perhaps a little thinner and more fine-drawn since the time when he and Dennis first met, laughed aloud with delight.