as the two hurriedly skirted the place another shell hurtled
over, tripped on the top edge of a roof across the square and exploded
with an appalling clatter and burst of noise. The roof vanished in a
whirlwind of smoke and dust, and the officers jumped from the doorway
where they had flung themselves crouching, and finished their passage
of the square at a run.

"Hottish corner," said one, as they slowed to a walk some distance
away.

"Silly fools," growled the other. "What do they want to hoist that huge
Red Cross flag up there for, where any airman can see it? Fairly asking
for it, I call it."

When they came to the outskirts of the town they found rather more
signs of life. People were hanging about their doorways and the shops,
fewer windows were shuttered, fewer faces peeped from the tiny grated
windows of the cellars. And up the center of the road, with lordly
calm, marched three Highlanders. The smooth swing of their kilts, their
even, unhurried step, the shoulders well back, and the elbows a shade
outturned, the bonnets cocked to a precisely same angle on the upheld
heads, all bespoke either an amazing ignorance of, or a bland
indifference to, the bombardment. Their march was stopped by a sentry,
who shouted to them and moved out from the pavement. Some sort of
argument was going on as the officers approached, and in passing they
heard the finish of it.

"You were pit there tae warn folk," a Highlander was saying. "Weel,
ye've dune that, so we'll awa on oor road. We're nae fonder o' shells
than y'are yersel. But we'd look bonnie, wouldn't we, t' be tellin' the
Cameron lads we promised to meet, that we were feared for a bit
shellin'...."

And after they had passed, the officers looked back and saw the three
Scots swinging their kilts and swaggering imperturbably on to the town,
and their meeting with the "Cameron lads."

There were no more shells, but that afternoon a Taube paid another of
its frequent visits and vigorously bombed the railway station again,
driving the inhabitants back once more to the inadequate shelter of
their cellars and basements. And yet, as the same two officers marched
with their battalion through the town towards the firing-line that
evening, they found the streets quite normally bustling and astir, and
there seemed to be no lack of light in the shops and houses and about
the streets. Here and there as they passed, children stood stiffly to
attention and gravely saluted the bat