"Where's Mervin?"
"He had just gone out," I said, "I was speaking to him, he went with Lieut. —— to Marie Redoubt."
I suddenly recollected that I should not have left my place outside, so I went into my niche again. Had Mervin got clear, I wondered? The courtyard was deserted, and it was rapidly growing darker, a drizzle had begun, and the wet ran down my rifle.
"Any word of Mervin?" I called to Stoner when he came out from the dug-out, and moved cautiously across the yard. There was a certain unsteadiness in his gait, but he was regaining his nerve; he had really been more surprised than hurt. He disappeared without answering my question, probably he had not heard me.
"Stretcher-bearers at the double."
The cry, that call of broken life which I have so often heard, faltered across the yard. From somewhere two men rushed out carrying a stretcher, and hurried off in the direction taken by Stoner. Who had been struck? Somebody had been wounded, maybe killed! Was it Mervin?
Stoner came round the corner, a sad look in his brown eyes.
"Mervin's copped it," he said, "in the head. It must have been that shell that done it; a splinter, perhaps."
"Where is he?"
"He's gone away on the stretcher unconscious. The officer has been wounded as well in the leg, the neck, and the face."