s woeful state that I shook hands with the Major of the
battery. And as we stood upon that awful waste, he chattered, I
remember, of books. Then, side by side, we came to the battery--four
mighty howitzers, that crashed and roared and shook the very earth
with each discharge, and whose shells roared through the air with the
rush of a dozen express trains.

Following the Major's directing finger, I fixed my gaze some distance
above the muzzle of the nearest gun and, marvel of marvels, beheld
that dire messenger of death and destruction rush forth, soaring,
upon its way, up and up, until it was lost in cloud. Time after time
I saw the huge shells leap skywards and vanish on their long journey,
and stood thus lost in wonder, and as I watched I could not but
remark on the speed and dexterity with which the crews handled these
monstrous engines.

"Yes," nodded the Major, "strange thing is that a year ago they
_weren't_, you know--guns weren't in existence and the men weren't
gunners--clerks an' all that sort of thing, you know--civilians,
what?"

"They're pretty good gunners now--judging by effect!" said I, nodding
towards the abomination of desolation that had once been a village.

"Rather!" nodded the Major, cheerily, "used to think it took three
long years to make a gunner once--do it in six short months now!
Pretty good going for old England, what? How about a cup of tea in my
dugout?"

But evening was approaching, and having far to go we had perforce to
refuse his hospitality and bid him a reluctant good-by.

"Don't forget to take a peep at the mine craters," said he, and
waving a cheery adieu, vanished into his dugout.

Ten minutes' walk, along the road, and before us rose a jagged mount,
and beyond it another, uncanny hills, seared and cracked and
sinister, up whose steep slopes I scrambled and into whose yawning
depths I gazed in awestruck wonder; so deep, so wide and huge of
circumference, it seemed rather the result of some titanic convulsion
of nature than the handiwork of man.

I could imagine the cataclysmic roar of the explosion, the smoke and
flame of the mighty upheaval and war found for me yet another horror
as I turned and descended the precipitous slope. Now, as I went, I
stumbled over a small mound, then halted all at once, for at one end
of this was a very small cross, rudely constructed and painted white,
and tacked to this a strip of lettered tin, bearing a name and
number, and beneath these