e could not recollect he seemed now
to be resting in the easiest of all easy chairs in a dim, low room.

In the hearth there was a glint of fire and a blue, sweet-scented puff
of wood smoke; a great black oak beam roughly hewn crossed the
ceiling. Through the leaded panes of the windows he saw a rich glow of
sunlight, green lawns, and against the deepest and most radiant of all
blue skies the wonderful far-lifted towers of a vast, Gothic
cathedral--mystic, rich with imagery.

"Good Lord!" he murmured to himself. "I didn't know they had such
places in France. It's just like Wells. And it might be the other day
when I was going past the Swan, just as it might be past that window,
and asked the ostler what time it was, and he says, 'What time? Why,
summer-time'; and there outside it looks like summer that would last
for ever. If this was an inn they ought to call it _The Soldiers'
Rest_."

He dozed off again, and when he opened his eyes once more a kindly
looking man in some sort of black robe was standing by him.

"It's all right now, isn't it?" he said, speaking in good English.

"Yes, thank you, sir, as right as can be. I hope to be back again
soon."

"Well well; but how did you come here? Where did you get that?" He
pointed to the wound on the soldier's forehead.

The soldier put his hand: up to his brow and looked dazed and puzzled.

"Well, sir," he said at last, "it was like this, to begin at the
beginning. You know how we came over in August, and there we were in
the thick of it, as you might say, in a day or two. An awful time it
was, and I don't know how I got through it alive. My best friend was
killed dead beside me as we lay in the trenches. By Cambrai, I think
it was.

"Then things got a little quieter for a bit, and I was quartered in a
village for the best part of a week. She was a very nice lady where I
was, and she treated me proper with the best of everything. Her
husband he was fighting; but she had the nicest little boy I ever
knew, a little fellow of five, or six it might be, and we got on
splendid. The amount of their lingo that kid taught me--'We, we' and
'Bong swot' and 'Commong voo potty we' and all--and I taught him
English. You should have heard that nipper say ''Arf a mo', old un!'
It was a treat.

"Then one day we got surprised. There was about a dozen of us in the
village, and two or three hundred Germans came down on us early one
morning. They got us; no help for 'it. Before we c