me, with a humorous look, as we continued our walk.
"Very stout fellow, though."

It was a quarter-past three now, and the experiences of the day had
sharpened the appetite. The colonel wasn't finished yet, however. He
turned into the Infantry Brigade Headquarters, and spent a quarter of
an hour with the brigadier general and his brigade-major discussing the
artillery work that would be required for the next big advance. We
discovered a lane we hadn't walked through before, and went that way
to our farmhouse. It was four o'clock when we got back, and two
batteries had prisoners waiting to go before the colonel. So lunch was
entirely wiped off the day's programme, and at a quarter to five we sat
down to tea and large quantities of buttered toast.

XIX. "THE COLONEL----"

We knew now that November 4th was the date fixed for the next battle.
The C.R.A. had offered the Brigade two days at the waggon lines, as a
rest before zero day. The colonel didn't want to leave our farm, but
two nights at the waggon lines would mean respite from night-firing for
the gunners; so he had asked the battery commanders to choose between
moving out for the two days and remaining in the line. They had decided
to stay.

It turned to rain on October 29th. Banks of watery, leaden-hued clouds
rolled lumberingly from the south-west; beneath a slow depressing
drizzle the orchard became a melancholy vista of dripping branches and
sodden muddied grass. The colonel busied himself with a captured German
director and angle-of-sight instrument, juggling with the working parts
to fit them for use with our guns--he had the knack of handling
intricate mechanical appliances. The adjutant curled himself up among
leave-rosters and ammunition and horse returns; I began writing the
Brigade Diary for October, and kept looking over the sandbag that
replaced the broken panes in my window for first signs of finer
weather.

The colonel and the adjutant played Wilde and myself at bridge that
night--the first game in our mess since April. Then the colonel and I
stayed up until midnight, talking and writing letters: he showed me a
diminutive writing-pad that his small son had sent by that day's post.
"That's a reminder that I owe him a letter," he smiled. "I must write
him one.... He's just old enough now to understand that I was coming
back to the war, the last time I said good-bye." The colonel said this
with tender seriousness.

A moaning wind sprang up