The doctor walked over to a shelf, and, taking down a rusty old sword, placed it on the table.
"Perhaps that is what you refer to, Colonel," he said. "Where the fellow picked it up is a mystery to me. It must be some hundreds of years old."
Colonel Arbuthnot took it in his hands and read this inscription on the blade:
NIGEL DE GAMELYN
... ADSUM ...
III
THE MILLS OF GOD
They were putting little Boudru to bed—the R.H.A. and the Corps of Royal Engineers and Stansfield, the big fat Infantry Sergeant. His little sister, already tucked up in bed, was nearly asleep. Boudru had been allowed to stay up till Sergeant Stansfield had come in from duty. The special privilege had been accorded to the little French boy on this, the last night that the British troops were to spend in the village. Boudru's home was in a portion of our line in which the defence trenches were of the semi-detached type—they did not join up with the other part of the line, and at times the place was distinctly unhealthy. Sometimes it was in the hands of the Huns, sometimes the British rushed it, and held on for a few weeks; there had been times when it had been occupied by both, at other times it was written on the squared official maps as no man's land. It was a spot in which there was always a feeling of something dreadful being close at hand; there was an air of expectancy about it and one felt there was a marked atmosphere of nerves about. You might be sniped from the house opposite, or blown out of the windows by a seventeen-inch shell. You never know. The man who sold you tobacco the day before might be lying stiff in the gutter next day, or more probably still, he might be dining with the German Staff a mile and a half away. All this uncertainty, coupled with the fact that the place was full of spies, and that valuable information had been finding its way through to the German lines, made the General decide to withdraw his troops and take up some trenches behind it.