a
description would have well passed for the spot through which they now
threaded their way.

It _had_ been a wood--a wood of tall, straight trees in full summer
leaf, with bramble bushes and pleasant undergrowth before the British
batteries had flung their devastating hail into it; but now it resembled
an old toothbrush more than anything else, with bristles long and short,
and sticking out at every angle.

Hundreds of fallen saplings barred their way. Here and there a beech had
been uprooted, and a great shell crater yawned where it had stood, and
the scarred trunks and bare poles were stained orange and yellow and
vivid metallic green by the explosive agents.

A line of Tennyson occurred to Dennis, as odd things will occur at the
oddest of moments.

"'I hate the little hollow behind the dreadful wood,'" he murmured, as
he made an enforced circuit round a larger crater than usual; and Hawke,
who was just ahead of him, stopped short and shrank back with a shout
of "Mind your eye, sir!"

Something had crashed among the stumps in front of them, and a German
60-pound shell burst with a deafening roar.

For an instant everything was obscured by a volume of dense black smoke,
and a rain of splinters and broken branches fell about them as the smoke
curled away.

"That was a near thing," said Dennis. "Another minute, and there would
have been three vacancies in the company."

"I'm not sure there ain't some already, sir," said Hawke in a curious,
hushed voice. "What's that yonder?"

They hurried forward, for they had all seen a writhing figure in khaki a
few yards ahead, and a sickening chill passed over Dennis as he
recognised his brother subaltern, young Delavoy-Bagotte, lying on his
back with a tree-trunk across his legs. Over the same trunk was another
figure, which did not move, and face downwards a yard away lay a third
man with his back broken.

Half buried in the chalky soil was the Lewis gun they had been carrying
forward when the shell fell.

"By Jove, Bagotte, old man, this is rotten luck!" exclaimed Dennis. "I'm
afraid you've got it badly."

The boy--he was only eighteen, but the ribbon of the Military Cross was
on the breast of his tunic--set his teeth hard and nodded as they
removed the body of the other man and lifted the tree-trunk away from
his legs by main force.

"Yes, pretty badly, Dashwood. My thighs are smashed to a jelly," he
said. "But don't worry about me. I believe the Lewis is all