Kenneth wondered why Harry had not returned. As soon as he had an opportunity he enquired about him, and learnt that the colonel had sent him to the village with a message. The road by which Kenneth had intended to return being closed, he could only regain his billet by tramping back until he reached the main road. But Harry on the bicycle met him halfway, and they reached their quarters in time for dinner. And there they learnt that a portion of the village which they had captured two days before had been won back by the Germans.
CHAPTER XVI
EXCHANGE NO ROBBERY
In a small room in one of the houses at the foot of the hill village, bending over a table spread with papers, sat Lieutenant Axel von Schwank, an officer of a crack Prussian regiment, and a scion of an ancient and exalted family.
He had had an excellent dinner, without sparing the wine: what need was there to do so when so many cases had been obtained gratis in Champagne? He would have liked to remain with his brother officers, convivially employed in the room on the other side of the passage; but his colonel had given him some work to do. That was the penalty of being a musician.
For Lieutenant Axel von Schwank was accomplished in music. His rendering of the Waldstein sonata was wonderful for an amateur and a Prussian; he sang "The Two Grenadiers" with éclat, as his friends used to say before the authorities ordered the French language to be abolished; and he was renowned for his ability to read the most difficult score at sight. With all that he was full of martial spirit: his cheeks were seamed with no fewer than three scars, proud memorials of his student days.
But it was for his musical skill that the colonel had selected him for the piece of work on which he was now engaged. It was very elementary work for a man who could play the Waldstein sonata and read a score by Strauss; any school girl could have done it; but even the greatest philosopher has at times to perform the simple operation of washing his face, and the lieutenant need not have felt that he was demeaning himself by a task so much below his powers. For what Lieutenant Axel von Schwank was doing was simply to transcribe into musical notation, on a sheet of ruled music paper, the two lines of German with which the colonel had supplied him.
Surely that is difficult, you say? He has only seven letters, A to G, to employ, representing the seven notes of the scale, and the German alphabet has twenty-six. What about the v's, and w's, and z's in which the German language is so much superior to the French? But in the first place, remember that the German musician calls H the note which the less accomplished Englishman calls B, and in the second place that the range of most instruments, including the German flute, extends beyond a single octave.
So that if the lieutenant writes this
