. There was a
short cut across the river and the railway and then on through
corn-fields. To strike it we ought to pass through a particular
skeleton house in the village we were leaving, out by the back garden,
and thence along a narrow track that led across a swamp. In the dark I
failed to find the house; so we plodded on, past the church, and took
to a main road. After walking two kilometres we switched south along a
by-road that led to the position A Battery had occupied. Not a soul had
passed since we took to the main road; the Boche shells, now arriving
in greater numbers, seemed, as is always the case at night, nearer than
they actually were.

Sounds of horses and of orders sharply given! It was the last section
of A Battery pulling out; in command young Stenson, a round-faced,
newly-joined officer, alert and eager, and not ill-pleased with the
responsibility placed upon him. "Have the other sections got up all
right?" I asked him. "Yes," he answered, "although they were shelled
just before getting in and Bannister was wounded--hit in the face, not
seriously, I think." Bannister, poor fellow, died three days later.

The doctor and I passed on, following a shell-plastered road that wound
towards a rough wooden bridge, put up a week before; thence across
soggy ground and over the railway crossing. There was a slight smell
of gas, and without a word to each other we placed our box-respirators
in the alert position. To avoid the passage of a column of ammunition
waggons crunching along one of the narrow streets we stepped inside a
crumbling house. No sign of furniture, no stove, but in one
corner--quaint relic of less eventful days--a sewing-machine, not even
rusted.

A grove of poplars embowered the quarry that we were seeking; and soon
our steps were guided by the neighing of horses, and by the raised
voice of the R.S.M. hectoring his drivers. The doctor and I were to
share a smelly dug-out, in which all the flies in the world seemed to
have congregated. The doctor examined at length the Boche wire bed
allotted to him, and refused to admit that it was as comfortable as the
one left behind. However, he expressed satisfaction with the mahogany
side-board that some previous occupant had loaned from a neighbouring
house; our servants had bespread it with newspapers and made a
washing-table of it.

The doctor quickly settled himself to sleep, but there were tasks for
me. "This is where I'm the nasty man," exclaimed