to a full stop, and the officer pulled in his horse
at the same time. The horse reared, his front feet caught in the
fender, he pawed the air wildly for a moment and, losing his balance,
he fell over backward rolling on the officer. Soldiers quickly caught
the horse and pulled him to one side, and greatly to our relief the
officer was able to get up and walk. It was characteristic of the
British officer that he had no feeling towards us on account of his
accident; on the contrary, bruised and aching as he must have been
though he would not admit it, he came over to the car and apologized
for having caused us inconvenience. It is the British way of doing
things.

As we traversed Ypres on our homeward route, a little girl held up
bouquets of spring flowers and we stopped while I bought a large bunch
of daffodils for the equivalent of two pennies. Crossing the railway
tracks by the shell-shattered station we struck into the
Dickiebush--Bailleul Road, and drove slowly homeward over the rough
pave.

Near Dickiebush the fields were pitted with numerous shell holes, and
the rails of a light railway at one place pointed heavenward where a
shell had exploded between them.

A pup, evidently unused to motor traffic on this bad bit of road, took
a chance and tried to dash across in front of the car but
miscalculated his distance and was bowled into the ditch.

It was curious to see one field ploughed with shells and full of
holes, and the next field with prominently placed new signs bearing
the inscription, "It is forbidden to walk over the growing grain." As
we passed through the rolling land of Belgium under the brow of "The
Scherpenberg," with Mount Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with
dugouts, it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple,
not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living underground
like moles, and that at any moment the air might be filled with shells
carrying death and destruction.

At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little French home town,
glad to have seen our friends in their new area by the famous old city
of the Flemish weavers.

Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of Northern France were
beginning to bloom white, and the wild flowers were quite thick in the
forest of Nieppe near Merville. It was the time in Canada when the
spring feeling suddenly got into the blood, when one threw work to the
winds and took to the woods in search of the first violets.