th save themselves from madness.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE

And now it was seven o'clock, and raining. Dinner was to be at eight.
I had before me a drive of nine miles along those slippery roads. It
was dark and foggy, with the ground mist of Flanders turning to a fog.
The lamps of the car shining into it made us appear to be riding
through a milky lake. Progress was necessarily slow.

One of the English officers accompanied me.

"I shall never forget the last time I dined out here," he said as we
jolted along. "There is a Belgian battery just behind the house. All
evening as we sat and talked I thought the battery was firing; the
house shook under tremendous concussion. Every now and then Mrs. K----
or Miss C---- would get up and go out, coming back a few moments later
and joining calmly in the conversation.

"Not until I started back did I know that we had been furiously
bombarded, that the noise I had heard was shells breaking all about
the place. A 'coal-box,' as they call them here, had fallen in the
garden and dug a great hole!"

"And when the young ladies went out, were they watching the bombs
burst?" I inquired.

"Not at all," he said. "They went out to go into the trenches to
attend to the wounded. They do it all the time."

"And they said nothing about it!"

"They thought we knew. As for going into the trenches, that is what
they are there to do."

My enthusiasm for mutton began to fade. I felt convinced that I should
not remain calm if a shell fell into the garden. But again, as
happened many times during those eventful weeks at the front, my pride
refused to allow me to turn back. And not for anything in the world
would I have admitted being afraid to dine where those two young women
were willing to eat and sleep and have their being day and night for
months.

"But of course," I said, "they are well protected, even if they are at
the trenches. That is, the Germans never get actually into the town."

"Oh, don't they?" said the officer. "That town has been taken by the
Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over
into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting."

"Where do they go at such times?" I asked.

"I never thought about it. I suppose they get into the cellar. But if
they do it is not at all because they are afraid."

We went on, until some five of the nine miles had been traversed.

I have said before that t