fully in the gutter he sang a jumbled
lullaby of melodies.

"There's maggots in the cheese,
You can 'ear the beggars sneeze--"

He struggled manfully to his feet, fell into a helpless fit of laughter
and collapsed again into the roadway with a heavy grunt. An N.C.O. found
him there a few minutes later.

"'Ere," he demanded, "wot are you doin' there?"

"Doin'," Bunny chuckled helplessly: "wot think I'm doin ... plantin'
daisies or diggin' for gold?"

"Look 'ere, me lad, if you're lookin' for trouble--!"

"Lookin' for trouble?--not lookin' for anything. Just 'avin' a rest by
the wayside an' gazin' at stars."

"Well, get up or I'll 'old you up, an' you'll SEE 'em then."

"Or-righ'. Want, want, lil' drop toddy?"

"Got much? Pass it over."

"Ain't got none. Only asked if you WANT a-a drop...." He moved away and
from far down the street his dirge carried faintly:

"There's whiskers on the pork
We curl 'em with a fork--."

In unhappy contract to Christmas. New Year proved to be a day of short
rations, bully beef and a rehearsal of an attack in the snow. The bread
ration dwindled down to Winkleian proportions.

A move up the line was pending in the near future and rumours that of
all hellish sectors they were going up the Passchendaele-Ypres areas,
were received with continuous outbursts of growling.

The young Staffords who had not the gruesome knowledge of Belgian
desolation were satisfied with a front anywhere near the magic Ypres.
They wanted to see the place where, as one of them was perpertually
saying. "A couple of Blighty regiments made a bloomin' 'ell of a mess of
the whole blooming' Jerry army."

There was everywhere a mutual recognition of a possible, a probable,
German attack on a scale to date unparalleled. Every battalion in the
Brigade was thoroughly cognisant that at some time during the next few
months they would be called upon to make another Cambrai stand. There
was a general feeling that he would attempt to crush the British Army at
a blow, seize the Channel ports, and thus isolate what armies had
escaped the first onslaught.

XI

DECEMBER-JANUARY, 1918

LEULENE--BRANDHOEK--YPRES

January 3.--Snow had, after three weeks on the ground beneath the
hardening influence of a temperature several degrees below zero, evolved
into a surface upon which a constant steady balance demanded no little
skill. Marching encumbered with a full pack, clumsy Army-shod fee