“Out there to the west, where the sun goes down, Punch.”
“Well, didn’t you find no farmhouses nor cottages where they’d give you a bit of something to eat?”
“Not one; only rough mountain-land, with a goat here and there.”
“Well, why didn’t you catch one, or drive your bayonet into it? If we couldn’t cook it we could have eaten it raw.”
“I tried to, Punch, but the two or three I saw had been hunted by the enemy till they were perfectly wild, and I never got near one.”
“But you didn’t see no enemy this time, did you?”
“Yes; they are dotted about everywhere, and I have been crawling about all day through the woods so as not to be seen. It’s worse there than in any direction I have been this week. The French are holding the country wherever I have been.”
“Oh, I do call this a nice game,” groaned the wounded boy. “Here, give us another cup of water. It does fill one up, and I have been feeling as hollow as a drum.”
Pen handed him the cup once more, and Punch drank with as much avidity as if it were his first.
“Yes,” he sighed, “I do call it a nice game! I say, though, comrade, don’t you think if you’d waited till it was dark, and then tried, you could have got through their lines to some place and have begged a bit of bread?”