The regimental M.O., nonplused and frightened, at once got into touch with the Field Ambulance and had Higgins—now in the last stage of panic and convinced that his end was near—removed to a Casualty Clearing Station. Then he descended on "C" Company's billet with some pungent form of chemical disinfectant, and rendered that erstwhile happy home utterly uninhabitable. The company, spluttering and swearing, tumbled out and ate its breakfast shivering in the open. If threats and curses could kill, Alf would have been a dead man fifty times over.

On his arrival at the C.C.S. his clothes were taken from him, and he was isolated for observation in a small ward; and a keen young medical practitioner named Browne—temporary captain in the R.A.M.C.—undertook his extraordinary case.

On finding that he did not immediately die, Alf recovered his normal spirits, and for a week he thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was a public character—all the medical officers within reach came[Pg 19] and shook their heads over him. He felt perfectly well; his pulse and temperature were from the first normal; but his hue remained undimmed. An old doctor who chanced to arrive when Higgins was having his midday meal, got out his notebook and entered "Abnormally voracious appetite" as a salient symptom of the new disease; but this was a mistake. In fact, no further symptoms of any kind developed; and in the end Captain Browne, in despair, determined to give up the case and to send Alf to see a noted skin-specialist at the Base.

[Pg 19]

Accordingly Higgins' clothes (smelling strongly of some distressing fumigatory) were brought to him, and he was told to get ready for his journey. Observing with displeasure that the effect of fumigation had been to turn his brasswork nearly black, he produced cleaning materials and got to work to remedy this.

At the first touch he gave to his second button, once more that awful apparition arose before him, and the same sepulchral voice was heard.

"What wouldst thou have? I am ready to serve thee as thy slave, and the slave of any who have that Button in their possession; I, and the other slaves of the Button."

Alf's mind was whirling. He had by now half forgotten his previous sight of this supernatural visitor, or rather had accounted for it satisfactorily in his mind. But no theory of intoxication could[Pg 20] hold good on this occasion, for Alf's only drink for the past week had been tea. The emotion uppermost in his 

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