one-flagged floor and look upon four
perforated walls and a shattered roof. The worst possible house in the
world would be an improvement on any of those dug-outs we had in the
trenches. The front room had been blown away, leaving a back room and a
couple of lean-tos which opened out from it. An attic under the thatched
roof with all one end knocked out completed the outfit. The outer and
inner walls were all made of that stuff known as wattle and daub--sort
of earth-like plaster worked into and around hurdles. A bullet would, of
course, go through walls of this sort like butter, and so they had. For,
on examining the outer wall on the side which faced the Germans, I found
it looking like the top of a pepper-pot for holes.

A sound as of a man trying to waltz with a cream separator, suggested
to my mind that someone had tripped and fallen over that mysterious
obstacle outside, which I had noticed on entering, and presently I heard
Hudson's voice cursing through the sack doorway.

He came in and saw me examining the place. "Hullo, you're here too, are
you?" he exclaimed. "Are you going to stay here as well?"

"I don't quite know yet," I replied. "It doesn't seem a bad idea, as I
have to walk the round of all the guns the whole time; all I can and
have to do is to hitch up in some central place, and this is just as
central as that rotten trench we've just come from."

"Of course it is," he replied. "If I were you I'd come along and stay
with me, and go to all your places from here. If an attack comes you'll
be able to get from one place to another much easier than if you were
stuck in that trench. You'd never be able to move from there when an
attack and bombardment had started."

Having given the matter a little further consideration I decided to move
from my dug-out to this cottage, so I left the village and went back
across the field to the trench to see to the necessary arrangements.

I got back to my lair and shouted for my servant. "Here, Smith," I said,
"I'm going to fix up at one of the houses in the village. This place of
ours here is no more central than the village, and any one of those
houses is a damn sight better than this clay hole here. I want you to
collect all my stuff and bring it along; I'll show you the way." So
presently, all my few belongings having been collected, we set out for
the village. That was my last of that fearful trench. A worse one I know
could not be found. My new life in the vill