nce for them, and it was hard to make them forget the
danger they were in. I found a young officer lying in the road, who
was badly hit in the leg. I had prayers with him and at his request I
gave him the Holy Communion. On the stretcher next to him, lay the
body of a dead man wrapped in a blanket. After I had finished the
service, the officer asked for some water. I went down and got him a
mouthful very strongly flavoured with petrol from the tin in which it
was carried. He took it gladly, but, just as I had finished giving him
the drink, a shell burst and there was a loud crack by his side. "Oh,"
he cried, "they have got my other leg." I took my electric torch, and,
allowing only a small streak of light to shine through my fingers, I
made an examination of the stretcher, and there I found against it a
shattered rum jar which had just been hit by a large piece of shell.
The thing had saved him from another wound, and I told him that he
owed his salvation to a rum jar. He was quite relieved to find that
his good leg had not been hit. I got the bearer party to take him off
as soon as possible down the long path across the fields which led to
the light railway, where he could be put on a truck. Once while I was
talking to the men in the shelter, a shell burst by the side of the
road and ignited a pile of German ammunition. At once there were
explosions, a weird red light lit up the whole place, and volumes of
red smoke rolled off into the starlit sky. To my surprise, from a
ditch on the other side of the road, a company of Highlanders emerged
and ran further away from the danger of the exploding shells. It was
one of the most theatrical sights I have ever seen. With the lurid
light and the broken road in the foreground, and the hurrying figures
carrying their rifles, it was just like a scene on the stage.

The stars were always a great comfort to me. Above the gun-flashes or
the bursting of shells and shrapnel, they would stand out calm and
clear, twinkling just as merrily as I have seen them do on many a
pleasant sleigh-drive in Canada. I had seen Orion for the first time
that year, rising over the broken Cathedral at Albert. I always (p. 144)
felt when he arrived for his winter visit to the sky, that he came as
an old friend, and was waiting like us for the wretched war to end. On
that September night, when the hours were beginning to draw towards
dawn, it gave me great pleasure to see him hanging in the East, while