d resumed the shambling trot at increased speed.
A soldier in khaki crossing the square also commenced to run for cover
as his ear caught the sound of the shell; passing near the woman's
basket, he stooped and grabbed it and doubled on with it after its
panting owner.

A group of soldiers standing in the archway shouted laughter and
encouragement, pretending they were watching a race, urging on the
runners.

"Go on, Khaki! go on!--two to one on the fat girl; two to one--I lay
the fie-ald." Their cries and clapping shut off, and they disappeared
like diving ducks as the shell roared down, struck with a horrible
crash one of the buildings in a side-street just off the square, burst
it open, and flung upward and outward a flash of blinding light, a
spurt of smoke, a torrent of flying bricks and broken stones. Through
the rattle and clatter of falling masonry and flying rubbish there
came, piercing and shrill, the sound of a woman's screams. They choked
off suddenly, and for some seconds there were no sounds but those of
falling fragments, jarring and hailing on the cobble-stones, of broken
glass crashing and tinkling from dozens of windows round the square.

As the noises of the explosion died away, figures crowded out anxiously
into the doorways again, and stood there and about the pavements,
looking round, pointing and gesticulating, and plainly prepared to run
back under cover at the first sign of warning. The half-dozen men who
had cheered the race across the square emerged from the archway, looked
around, and then set off running, keeping close under the shelter of
the houses, and disappearing into the thick smoke and dust that still
hung a thick and writhing curtain about the street-end in the corner of
the square.

The two officers who had sat at the cafe window looked at one another.

"You heard that squeal?" said one.

"Yes," said the other; "I think we might trot over. You knowing a
little bit about surgery might be useful."

"Oh, I dunno," said the first. "But, anyhow, let's go."

They paid their bill and went out, and as they crossed the square they
met a couple of the soldiers who had disappeared into the smoke. They
were moving at the double, but at a word from the officers they halted.
Both wore the Red Cross badge of the Army Medical Corps on their arms,
and one explained hurriedly that they were going for an ambulance, that
there was a woman killed, one man and a woman and two children badly
woun