The Boche having lately done a retreat—"strategic retirement," "tactical adjustment," "elastic evasion," or whatever Ludendorff is calling it this week—in plain words the Boche, having gloriously trotted backwards off a certain slice of France, Albert Edward and I found ourselves attached to a Corps H.Q. operating in a wilderness of grass-grown fields, ruined villages and smoking chateaux.  
One evening Albert Edward loitered up to the hen-house I was occupying at the time and chatted to me through the wires as I shaved.
 
"Put up seventeen hares and ten covey of partridges visiting outposts to-day—take my advice and scrap that moustache while you're about it, it must be a heavy drain on your system—and twenty hares and four covey riding home. Do you find lathering the ears improves their growth, or what?"
 
"The country is crawling with game," said I, ignoring his personalities, "and here we are hanging body and soul together on bully and dog biscuit."
 
"Exactly," said Albert Edward, "and in the meanwhile the festive lapin breeds and breeds. Has it ever occurred to you that, if something isn't done soon, we'll have Australia's sad story over again here in Picardy? Give the rabbits a chance and in no time they'll have eaten off all the crops in France. Why, on the Burra I've seen——"
 
"One moment," said I; "if I listen to your South Australian rabbit story again you've got to listen to my South African locust yarn; it's only fair."
 
"Oh, shut up," Albert Edward growled; "can't you understand this question is deadly serious?"
 
"Best put the Tanks on to 'em then," I suggested; "they'd enjoy themselves, and the Waterloo Cup wouldn't be in it—Captain Monkey-Wrench's brindled whippet, 'Sardine Tin,' 6 to 4; Major Spanner's 'Pig Iron,' 7 to 2; even money the field."
 
"Your humour is a trifle strained," said Albert Edward; "if you're not careful you'll crack a joke at the expense of a tendon one of these days."
 
"Look here," said I, wiping the blood off my safety-razor, "you're evidently struggling to give expression to some heavy brain wave; out with it."
 
"What about a pack of harriers?" said Albert Edward. "There must be swarms of sportive tykes about, faithful Fidos that have stuck to the dear old homestead through thick and thin, also refugee animals that follow the sweet-scented infantry cookers. I've got my old hunting-horn; you've got your old crop; between the two we ought to be able to mobilize 'em a bit and put the wind up these darn hares. I'm going to try anyway. I may say I look on it as a duty."
 
"Looked on in that light it's a sacred duty," said I; "and—er—incidentally we might reap a haunch of hare out of it now and again, mightn't we?"
 
"Incidentally, yes," said Albert Edward, "and a trifle of sport into the bargain—incidentally."
 
So we set about collecting a pack there and then by offering our servants five francs per likely dog and no questions asked.
 
No questions were asked, but I have a strong suspicion that our gentlemen were up all night and that there were dark deeds done in the dead of it, for the very next evening my groom and countryman presented us with a bill for forty-five francs.
 
The dogs, he informed us, were kennelled "in a little shmall place the like of an ice-house" at the northern extremity of the chateau grounds, and that "anyway a blind man himself couldn't miss them wid the screechin' an' hollerin' they are afther raisin' be dint of the confinement."
 
I had an appointment with the Q. Staff (to explain why I had indented for sixty-four horse rations while only possessing thirty-two horses, the excuse that they all enjoyed very healthy appetites apparently not sufficing), so Albert Edward went forth to inspect the pack alone.
 
He came into Mess very late, looking hot and dishevelled.
 
"My word, they've looted a blooming menagerie," he panted in my ear; "still, couldn't expect to pick Pytchley puppies off every bush, I suppose."
 
"What have they got, actually?" I inquired.
 
"Two couple of Belgian light-draught dogs—you know, the kind they hitch on to any load too heavy for a horse—an asthmatic beagle, an an?mic bloodhound, a domesticated wolf, an unfrocked poodle, and a sort of dropsical pug."
 
"What on earth is the pug for?" I asked.
 
"Luck," said Albert Edward. "Your henchman says 'them kind of little dogs do be bringing ye luck,' and backs it up with a very convincing yarn of an uncle of his in Bally-something who had a lucky dog—'as like this wan here as two spits, except maybe for the least little curliness of the tail'—which............