It was good to turn one's back on that hideous thing, and when they heard the headless trunk topple over on to the floor of the car behind them, both shivered, and the chauffeur's knuckles stood out white as he gripped the steering-wheel.
"I've seen two officers, one a brigadier-general, treated the same way, and their shover huddled forward against the screen dead as a door nail," said the man. "That was up near St. Julien, when Princess Pat's got wiped out; but it sort of hits you when you know the man, and this was his own car too. You'd better have your papers ready now, sir; they'll stop us at yonder white house."
The examining post at the little cabaret detained them, but did not hold them up more than a moment or so.
"A dispatch for Monsieur le Général," said Dennis to the sergeant in charge, who recoiled as he saw the tragedy that had taken place.
"Décapité, mon Dieu!" he exclaimed. "Pass, mon lieutenant," and they proceeded, leaving a red pool on the road where the car had halted.
While Dennis was inside the farmhouse a crowd of commiserating officers surrounded the car, and they would have rid it of its grim burden and interred poor Thompson among the little harvest of rude crosses that marked where their own dead were laid, but when one of them, who spoke English, suggested so doing, the chauffeur said "No."
"Beg your pardon, sir, but he'll be better buried in our own lines, where they'll give him the Last Post and all that." He was protesting when Dennis came out again quickly.
"It's a very good thing we took the bull by the horns," he said. "That message was tremendously important, and the general has been good enough to say all kinds of nice things about our bringing it along. We've got to go back top speed to Divisional Headquarters," and he stepped in.
All the officers saluted the dead man as the motor started on its return journey, and already the darkness was giving place before a ghostly grey feeling in the east, which was not light as yet, but heralded the near approach of dawn.
The chauffeur turned up his coat collar, for it had grown very cold, and he could not get rid of the oppression of that dread something which they were carrying—that something which a short hour before had been so full of life and vigour and kindly thought for all with whom it had come in contact.