No wonder the boys involuntarily uncovered and stood for some time without speaking.

“Somebody’s mother,” said Dicky at last, with a catch in his throat as he uttered the words.

“Yes, perhaps,” said Bob, as he gently covered the body with a blanket.  “We must bury her decently.  Who knows how long she might have lain here but for our chance coming?”

Under a dust sheet, strung on a bit of string along the side of the room, the boys found many women’s garments, of the cheapest, simplest sort, and some men’s clothing.  Dicky stripped off his uniform and pulled on a random selection of what lay to his hand.  With the addition of a dirty cap, found on the floor at the foot of the bed, and a pair of coarse boots, one without a heel, that were discovered in the cupboard in the kitchen, Dicky’s disguise was complete.  Given a plentiful application of dirt on face and hands, and a couple of days’ growth of stubble on his chin, no one could have imagined him a smart young officer.

Bob was not so easy to outfit.  His larger size made it impossible for him to find a coat that he could get into, so he had to content himself with an old shirt and a dilapidated pair of trousers which did not come near his feet.  No other hat or cap could he find.

Toward dusk, at Dicky’s suggestion, they went out and made a search for some rude instrument wherewith to dig a grave.  They found a broken shovel and a dull adze-like implement.  The grave prepared, and dusk having come, Bob was struck with the idea that they had best bury their uniforms.

“If the Germans should happen to clap eyes on us and decided to search us, it would be all up with two Brighton boys,” said Bob.  “So it’s my think that we’d better hide the certain evidences as to our identity.”

Dicky not only agreed to this, and started at once to put the idea into practice, but made a further suggestion.  “We might give the poor old woman a better resting place further afield, if we knew where to find a graveyard,” he said.

“We can search for one,” replied Bob.  “To carry her away from here would be the best plan, and bury her when we find a proper burial ground.  We certainly should not have to take her far.”

“If we were discovered doing so, I suppose the fact we were actually carrying our dead, or what the Germans would think was our dead, would help us to get a bit further, too,” Dicky argued.

“Fine!  And if I can’t talk Belgian-French better than any German that ever lived I’ll eat my helmet!”

So they took the cupboard door from its hinges, wrapped the body of the dead woman carefully in the tattered blankets from her bed, and laid it on the improvised stretcher.

“We should leave some sort of word as to what we are doing,” said Bob.  “Suppose some of her folks come back and do not find any trace of her?  They might never know of her death.”

“When we find a place to bury her we will find someone to whom we can tell her story, so much as we know of it,” answered Dicky.  “Perhaps we might even find a priest to help lay her away.”