of some refinement. The rooms were large, with lofty ceilings;
there were carpets on the floors, although so covered with dirt and
dried mud and the dust of fallen plaster that they were hardly
discernible as carpets. In one room a large polished table had a
broken leg replaced by an up-ended barrel, one big arm-chair had its
springs and padding showing through the burst upholstering. Another
was minus all its legs, and had the back wrenched off and laid flat
with the seat on the floor, evidently to make a bed. There were
several good engravings hanging askew on the walls or lying about the
floor, all soiled with rain and cut and torn by their splintered glass.
The large open-grate fireplace had an artistically carved overmantel
sadly chipped and smoke-blackened, a tiled hearth in fragments; the
wall-paper in a tasteful design of dark-green and gold was blotched and
discoloured, and hung in peeling strips and gigantic 'dog's-ears'; from
the poles and rings over the windows the tattered fragments of a lace
curtain dangled. There was plenty of evidence that the room had been
occupied by others since its lawful tenants had fled. It was strewn
with broken or cast-off military equipments, worn-out boots, frayed and
mud-caked putties, a burst haversack and pack-valise, a holed
water-bottle, broken webbing straps and belts, a bayonet with a snapped
blade, a torn grey shirt, and a goatskin coat. The windows had the
shutters closed, and were sandbagged up three parts their height, the
need for this being evident from the clean, round bullet-holes in the
shutters above the sandbags, and the ragged tears and holes in the
upper part of the opposite wall. In an upper corner a gaping
shell-hole had linen table-cloths five or six fold thick hung over to
screen the light from showing through at night. In a corner lay a heap
of mouldy straw and a bed-mattress; the table and fireplace were
littered with dirty pots and dishes, the floor with empty jam and
biscuit tins, opened and unopened bully-beef tins, more being full than
empty because the British soldier must be very near starving point
before he is driven to eat 'bully.' Over everything lay, like a white
winding-sheet, the cover of thick plaster-dust shaken down from the
ceiling by the hammer-blows of the shells. The room door opened into a
passage. At its end a wide staircase curved up into empty space, the
top banisters standing out against the open blue sky. The whole