So by sheer bluffing I got out from between the Lion's paws. They sent me to Lewes Prison then. With its baths and lawns for tennis, it hardly seemed a prison, and I was content there until last spring, the United States Department of Justice needed me as a witness in its Grand Jury proceedings.
I came over, gave my testimony—and now here I am. One volume of my life's history apparently is written to a Finis. What will the next one be, I wonder?
REAL-LIFE ROMANCES OF THE WAR
Told by Malcolm Savage Treacher
The author is a sergeant in a famous regiment, and has been invalided to England after an exciting time in the Near East. In these unusual articles he sets down a number of little stories—cameos of the Great War—told to him by soldiers during his seven months' sojourn in various hospitals. The incidents are authenticated by the names and regiments of the men concerned. "All the stories are related exactly as I heard them," he writes in the Wide World Magazine.
I—TALE OF MYSTERY OF THE ABANDONED CHATEAU
During the early months of the war, Corporal R. J. Mullins, of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, was among those who helped to stem the flood of Germans advancing on Paris. He is a slight, boyish figure, with merry, laughing eyes, and in spite of two serious wounds from shell-fire manages to-day to cram as much vitality into his life as any six ordinary men. I met him in hospital, where he related to me the following curious experiences.
One evening his regiment was ordered to attack a château which the German General Staff was known to have occupied the previous night. No enemy soldier, however, was found there when the British arrived—nothing except signs of a hasty evacuation. On the table were the remains of an interrupted meal, some of the pictures had been removed, and everything of value in the mansion had been taken away.