At twelve minutes past one the adjutant, Wilde, and myself sat down to lunch. "The colonel said he wouldn't be late—but we needn't wait," said the adjutant.
"No; we don't want to wait," agreed Wilde, who had been munching chocolate.
At a quarter-past one; "Crump!" "Crump!" "Crump!"—the swift, crashing arrival of three high-velocity shells.
"I'll bet that's not far from A Battery," called Wilde, jumping up; and then settled down again to his cold beef and pickles.
"First he's sent over to-day," said the adjutant. "He's been awfully quiet these last two days."
Manning had brought in the bread-and-butter and apple pudding that Meddings had made to celebrate his return from leave, when the door opened abruptly. Gillespie, the D.A. gas officer stood there. It was the habit to complain with mock-seriousness that Gillespie timed his visits with our meal-times. I had begun calling "Here he is again," when something drawn, something staring in his lean Scotch face, stopped me. I thought he was ill.
The adjutant and Wilde were gazing curiously at him. My eyes left his face. I noticed that his arms were pushed out level with his chest; he grasped an envelope between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. His lower jaw had fallen; his lips moved, and no sound came from them.
The three of us at the table rose to our feet. All our faculties were lashed to attention.
Gillespie made a sort of gulp. "I've got terrible news," he said at last.
I believe that one thought, and only one thought, circuited through the minds of the adjutant, Wilde, and myself: The colonel!—we knew! we knew!