Free A Test to Destruction by Henry Williamson Page B

covering the lower part of his face, thus emphasising a long nose and dark staring eyes. Phillip saw that a mouth-organ was tucked into one shoulder-strap of his tommy’s tunic.
    *
    Hetty, going in the back way to play her nightly game of piquet with Thomas Turney, brought a letter from Phillip. “It has just come!” she said, with her gay little laugh. “But neither Dickie nor I can fathom the first part. What do you think, Papa?”
    Thomas Turney put on his spectacles, and began to read aloud.
    2 Gaultshire Regt.               
    B.E.F. 27 February 1918
    Dear Mother and Father, and all Kind Relations including Sprat and his foster-Mother,
    Please enter Roxford Rameses or Northanger Endymion the Second at the Fat Stock Show, from our Vulpine——
    He paused. “What’s the next word? It’s either ‘farm’ or ‘farmy’. H’m. We need a Sherlock Holmes to decipher this——” He read on:
    I am sure that either of these boars from our Vulpine Farm will win the first prize, we have in my opinion nothing better in their class. Don’t let the bailiff deter you. If in doubt about this, ask Grandpa’s advice, for he knows the game not only forwards but backwards. The weather here is cold and some snow has fallen.
    Thomas Turney stared at the letter, while Hetty and Aunt Marian sat very still. At last he chuckled. “I think I see through it now! Phillip told me when he was last home that if we took the first letters of every word at the beginning of the first sentence, it would indicate where he was. Now where are we——” He began to spell, “P-E-R-R-O-N-E. That’s it, Peronne! But misspelled. There’s a map in the Star tonight.” He showed them. “There you are! And now for Vulpine Farm. Didn’t he say that the sign of the Army he served in all last year was a fox?”
    “Yes, Papa, the Fifth Army!”
    “That’s right. Gough’s Fifth Army, in a quiet part of the line, right away from Ypres, there it is, Peronne, on the map. So you have nothing to worry about, my girl!”
    “I’ll just slip back and tell Dickie, Papa. He doesn’t say much, but I know he is greatly concerned about Phillip. I won’t be long.”
    Richard was playing The Sea, by Frank Bridge, one of his favourite records. He stopped the motor as soon as she entered, believing that she had no feeling for such beauty, and the thought dulled him.
    “Peronne, is that the place where Master Phillip is now? Why, it was given up by the Germans a year ago, when they hadtheir ‘landslide in the West’, as the Trident called it. They destroyed a large tract of country, blowing up all buildings, poisoning wells, and cutting down trees, so they won’t exactly want it back, will they?” he said cheerfully. “Now that your best boy has found himself a quiet part of the line, take my advice, and enjoy your gambling, Hetty!” He was happy, and yet, somehow, the music did not sound quite the same when he started the turntable once again.
    *
    During intervals between his duties Phillip rode a young spirited chestnut gelding 15.3 hands high, lent to him by the transport officer. Away from the incinerated and chloride smells of camp there lay a country of rolling downland little touched by war, except that all trees had been cut down, and long ago become firewood, so that only dead stumps lined the roads. There were no villages, only an occasional heap of rubble.
    It was now the second week of March. Despite drafts, the battalion was more than three hundred men under strength. He had been surprised to find that the regular battalion was little different from a service battalion: his mental picture had to be re-made, from one of sahib officers, to chaps like himself. A few new second-lieutenants from Sandhurst; others from Cadet centres and the disbanded 8th battalion of Kitchener’s Army, or what was left of it after Somme, Hindenburg Line, and Third Ypres.
    The Colonel, now that the battalion was out of the line, had the officers dining in