young Hearn of A Battery was killed by machine-gun bullets at 70 yards'
range, and Major Bullivant, with a smashed arm and a crippled thigh,
huddled under a wall until Dumble found him--the concluding fight that
brought me a strange war trophy in a golfing-iron found in a hamlet
that the Boche had sprawled upon for four full years.... And the name
punched on the iron was that of an Oxford Street firm.

Collinge and I rode into Bousies in the wan light of an October
afternoon. At a cross-roads that the Boche had blown up--"They didn't
do it well enough; the guns got round by that side track, and we were
only held up ten minutes," said Collinge--Brigade Headquarters'
sign-board had been planted in a hedge. My way lay up a slushy
tree-bordered lane; Collinge bade me good-bye, and rode on down the
winding street.

There were the usual welcoming smiles. Manning gave me a "Had a good
leave, sir?" in his deep-sea voice, and Wilde came out to show where my
horse could be stabled. "It's a top-hole farm, and after the next move
we'll bring Headquarters waggon line up here.... The colonel says you
can have his second charger now that you've lost 'Tommy.' He's taking
on Major Veasey's mare, the one with the cold back that bucks a bit.
She's a nice creature if she's given plenty of work."

"How is the colonel?" I asked.

"Oh, he's in great form; says the war may end any minute. Major Simpson
and Major Drysdale are both away on leave, and the colonel's been up a
good deal seeing the batteries register.... We got a shock when we came
into this place yesterday. A 4.2 hit the men's cook-house, that small
building near the gate.... But they haven't been troublesome since."

The end wall of the long-fronted narrow farmhouse loomed up gauntly
beside the pillared entrance to the rectangular courtyard. A
weather-vane in the form of a tin trotting horse flaunted itself on the
topmost point. This end wall rose to such height because, though the
farmhouse was one-storied, its steep-sloping roof enclosed an attic big
enough to give sixty men sleeping room. Just below the weather-vane was
a hole poked out by the Boche for observation purposes. Our adjutant
used to climb up to it twice daily as a sort of constitutional. Some
one had left in this perch a bound volume of a Romanist weekly, with
highly dramatic, fearfully coloured illustrations. As the house
contained some twenty of these volumes, I presumed that they betrayed
the religious le