sack
crammed so full. What have you brought with you?"

"Necessaries; but not half what I shall need. Has my kit arrived?"

"My dear chap, you will never see your kit up here; and what is more,
you will have to leave most of those things you have brought with you
behind, before you go up the front line. Dump your things out here,
and I will tell you what to take."

We emptied his pack and haversack. I have never in all my life seen
such a lot of rubbish in the war kit of a soldier. There seemed to be
nothing there he would really need; but a curious mixture of strange
articles which would fill a fancy bazaar. There were hair-brushes with
ebony backs and silver monograms, silk handkerchiefs with fancy
borders, a pinky tooth-paste, oozing out of a leaden tube; and crushed
between a comb and a pair of silk socks, a large bottle of reddish
tooth-wash, sufficient to last him three years; and half of which had
leaked through the cork to the destruction of about a dozen silk
handkerchiefs, spotted and bordered in fanciful shades. There was a
box of cigars, a heavy china pot of massage-cream, a pot of
hair-pomade, a leather writing-case, a large ivory-backed mirror,
which had lost its usefulness for ever, a bottle of fountain-pen ink,
two suits of silk pajamas, one striped with pink and the other blue, a
huge bath-towel, a case containing seven razors, one for each day in
the week, and a sponge as big as his head. Poor Septimus! in his
simplicity and ignorance, for the first time in his life he had packed
his own kit.

CHAPTER XI

DEATH VALLEY

MOVING OVER BATTLE-FIELDS. ---- BATTALION, LONDON REGIMENT, IN
POSSESSION. THE MYSTERY TRENCH. FALFEMONT FARM

The final preparations completed, the first platoon began to move off;
other platoons followed at intervals, the column slowly wending its
way through the Valley of Death to its mysterious destination.

We seemed to be going into the unknown; the air was full of mystery;
it was uncanny, unnatural. We were moving over battle-fields. The
ground was a mass of shell-holes; progress could only be made by
walking in single file along a narrow footpath, which twisted in
tortuous persistency between the shell-holes, causing innumerable
halts and starts, until the column tailed off into an endless line of
shadowy figures.

Here and there the men became lost to view in some gun-ridden cavity;
whilst there again they appeared silhouetted against the moonlit sky,
as man