oment he eyed me a
trifle dour and askance, then he smiled (a grave Scots smile).

"Thank ye, I wull that!" said he, and extracted the cigarette with
muddy fingers.

"Ye'll hae a sore leg, I'm thinking!" said I.

"Ou aye," he admitted with the same grave smile, "but it's no sae
muckle as a' that--juist a wee bit skelpit I--"

Our car moved forward, gathered speed, and we bumped and swayed on
our way; the bagpipes shrieked and wailed, grew plaintively soft, and
were drowned and lost in that other sound which was a murmur no
longer, but a rolling, distant thunder, with occasional moments of
silence.

"Ah, the guns at last!" said I.

"Yes," nodded K., lighting another cigarette, "I've been listening to
them for the last hour."

Here my friend F., who happened to be the Intelligence Officer in
charge, leaned forward to say:

"I'm afraid we can't get into Beaumont Hamel, the Boches are strafing
it rather, this morning, but we'll go as near as we can get, and then
on to what was La Boiselle. We shall leave the car soon, so better
get into your tin hats." Forthwith I buckled on one of the morions we
had brought for the purpose and very uncomfortable I found it. Having
made it fairly secure, I turned, grinning furtively, to behold K.'s
classic features crowned with his outlandish-seeming headgear, and
presently caught him grinning furtively at mine.

"They're not so heavy as I expected," said I.

"About half a pound," he suggested.

Pulling up at a shell-shattered village we left the car and trudged
along a shell-torn road, along a battered and rusty railway line, and
presently struck into a desolate waste intersected by sparse
hedgerows and with here and there desolate, leafless trees, many of
which, in shattered trunk and broken bough, showed grim traces of
what had been; and ever as we advanced these ugly scars grew more
frequent, and we were continually dodging sullen pools that were the
work of bursting shells. And then it began to rain again.

On we went, splashing through puddles, slipping in mud, and ever as
we went my boots and my uncomfortable helmet grew heavier and
heavier, while in the heaven above, in the earth below and in the air
about us was the quiver and thunder of unseen guns. As we stumbled
through the muddy desolation I beheld wretched hovels wherein
khaki-clad forms moved, and from one of these damp and dismal
structures a merry whistling issued, with hoarse laughter.

On we tramped, thr