"His brothers?" queried Ralph.
"Ay," continued Alderhame, with a laugh. "In other words, his pigs."
The order to "Fall in" ended the interview. The heavily laden Tommies, bent under the weight of their packs and equipment, prepared to embark while Setley made his way to the train.
The next few days passed only too quickly. Hurried visits to the Stores, receiving the congratulations of his numerous acquaintances, modestly relating his adventures to his admiring relatives and going into dozens of personal matters that claimed his attention—these were but a few of the things that occupied the young second-lieutenant's time. The while he was consumed with impatience to take up his new duties. Reports from the Front hinted of important events in the immediate future. Something big was in the air. A "push," long-promised and compared with which the previous operations, magnificent though they were, would be entirely dwarfed, was imminent. At last the British Empire, ever backward in preparation, had more than caught up with her Germanic rival, and with quiet confidence millions of the subjects of King George awaited the news that at last the Huns were being thrown back towards the banks of the Rhine.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE GREATER PUSH
""Haig has occupied Bapaume and Péronne, encountering little opposition."
Such was the news that greeted second-lieutenant Ralph Setley on disembarking at Boulogne. Bapaume and Péronne—places that for months and months had been practically within sight of the British trenches, and yet seemed as far remote as Peru. Miles and miles of deep concrete reinforced earthworks, hundreds of machine-guns, acres of formidable barbed wire, and the pick of the Kaiser's legions, had been in front of those two towns; and yet the Huns had gone—retreated.
"A voluntary retirement, according to our plans." Ralph smiled when he read the mendacious German official report. Can any sane individual imagine a voluntary retirement in these circumstances. After two years of hard work, fortifying and defending those deep-dug trenches, would any belligerent voluntarily abandon ground gained and maintained at such a cost of blood and treasure?