At the abrupt end of a short row of houses it stopped where it should
have turned suddenly, and became a rubbish-heap lying in a waste place.

Just at first I thought we must have gone out of our course somehow and
missed the road to Zele. It was difficult to realize that this
rubbish-heap lying in a waste place ever _had_ been a road. But for the
shell of a house that stood next to it, the last of the row, and the
piles of lath and plaster, and the shattered glass on the sidewalk and
the blown dust everywhere, it might have passed for the ordinary
no-thoroughfare of an abandoned brick-field.

Mr. M. made me keep close under the wall of a barn or something on the
other side of the street, the only thing that stood between us and the
German batteries. Beyond the barn were the green fields bare to the guns
that had shelled this end of the village. At first we hugged our shelter
tight, only looking out now and then round the corner of the barn into
the open country.

A flat field, a low line of willows at the bottom, and somewhere behind
the willows the German batteries. Grey puffs were still curling about
the stems and clinging to the tops of the willows. They might have been
mist from the river or smoke from the guns we had heard. I hadn't time
to watch them, for suddenly Mr. M. darted from his cover and made an
alarming sally into the open field.

He said he wanted to find some pieces of nice hot shell for me.

So I had to run out after Mr. M. and tell him I didn't want any pieces
of hot shell, and pull him back into safety.

All for nothing. Not a gun fired.

We strolled across what was left of the narrow street and looked through
the window-frames of a shattered house. It had been a little inn. The
roof and walls of the parlour had been wrecked, so had most of the
furniture. But on a table against the inner wall a row of clean glasses
still stood in their order as the landlord had left them; and not one of
them was broken.

I suppose it must have been about time for the guns to begin firing
again, for Mr. L. called to us to come back and to look sharp too. So we
ran for it. And as we leaped into the car Mr. L. reproved Mr. M. gravely
and virtuously for "taking a lady into danger."

The car rushed back into Baerlaere if anything faster than it had rushed
out, Mr. L. sitting bolt upright with an air of great majesty and
integrity. I remember thinking that it would never, never do to duck if
the shells came,