This said, he left them and returned no more;
    But whispers passed from Vimy to Verdun,
  Where’er the fields ran thickliest with gore,
    Of some stray bomber that belonged to none,
  But none more fierce or flung a fairer bomb,
  Who ran unscathed the gamut of the Somme
  And followed Freyberg up the Beaucourt mile
    With uncouth cries and streaming muddy hair;
  But after, when they sought his name and style
    And would have honoured him—­he was not there.

  But most he loved to lie upon Lorette
    And, couched on cornflowers, gaze across the lines
  At Vimy’s heights—­we had not Vimy yet—­
    Pale Souchez’s bones and Lens among the mines,
  The tall pit-towers and dusky heaps of slag,
  Until, like eagles on the mountain-crag
  By strangers stirred, with hoarse indignant shrieks
    Gunners emerged from some deep-delved lair
  To chase the intruder from their sacred peaks
    And cast him down to Ablain St. Nazaire.

  And rumour said he roamed the rearward ways
    In quiet seasons when no battle brewed;
  The transport, homing through the evening haze,
    Had seen and carried him, and given him food;
  And he would leave them at Bethune canteen
  Or some hot drinking-house at Noeux-les-Mines,
  Where he would sit with wine and eggs and bread
    Till the swart minions of the A.P.M. 
  Stole in and called for him, but found him fled
    Out at the back.  He was too much for them.

  Too much.  And surely thou shalt e’er be so;
    No hungry discipline shall starve thy soul;
  Shalt freely foot it where the poppies blow,
    Shalt fight unfettered when the cannon roll,
  And haply, Wanderer, when the hosts go home,
  Thou only still in Aveluy shalt roam,
  Haunting the crumbled windmill at Gavrelle
    And fling thy bombs across the silent lea,
  Drink with shy peasants at St. Catherine’s Well
    And in the dusk go home with them to tea.

  A. P. H.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE “KNIGHTLY MANNER.”

BELGIUM.  “AS LONG AS THERE IS MOTION IN MY BODY, AND LIFE TO GIVE ME
WORDS, I’LL CRY FOR JUSTICE!”

KAISER.  “JUSTICE SHALL NEVER HEAR YOU.  I AM JUSTICE!”

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, Valentinian, III. 1.

("There is no longer any international law.”—­The KAISER to Mr.
GERARD.)]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Monday, August 13th.—­In a certain political club there used, before the War, to be a popular pick-me-up compounded of a little whisky, a little Angostura and a good deal of soda-water, and known after its inventor as “a Henderson.”  In one respect the speech explaining his resignation which the right hon.  Member for Barnard Castle delivered this afternoon resembled this eponymous beverage, for it was decidedly effervescent.  But the other ingredients were wrongly apportioned—­too much of the bitters and not enough of the mellowing spirit.