um would stop! Do you hear it
echoing through the air? And the noise hurts--hurts like hell, Molly.
Ah! Heaven, but it's cold; and I can't see you, my lady; I don't know
where you are."

Once again he became conscious of figures moving around him. They
seemed to be carrying motionless men past his feet--men on stretchers
covered with blankets. With staring eyes he watched the proceeding,
trying to understand what was happening. In front of him was a window
in which the glass had been smashed, leaving great jagged pieces
sticking out from the sides of the frame. He wondered vaguely why it
had been left in such a dangerous condition; when he and Molly had
their house such a thing would never be allowed to happen--if it did it
would be mended at once. He asked one of the passing figures what had
caused the damage, and when he got no answer he angrily repeated the
question.

He fretted irritably because no one seemed to take any notice of him,
and suddenly his head began throbbing worse than ever. But the hazy
indistinctness was gone; the man was acutely conscious of everything
around him. Memory had come back, and he knew where he was and why he
was there. He remembered the fierce artillery bombardment; he recalled
getting over the parapet, out on to the brown shell-pocked earth,
sodden and heavy with the drenching rain; he recalled the steady
shamble over the ground with boots so coated with wet mud that they
seemed to drag him back. Then clear in his mind came the picture of
Chilcote cheering, shouting, lifting them on to the ruins of what once
had been a village; he saw Chilcote falter, stop, and, with a curious
spinning movement, crash forward on to his face; he saw the Germans--he
saw fierce-faced men like animals at bay, snarling, fighting; he heard
once again that trembling cry of "_Kamerade_"; and then--a blank. The
amazing thing was that it was all jumbled up with Molly. He seemed to
have been with her lately--and yet she couldn't have been out there
with him. He puzzled a bit, and then gave it up: it hurt his head so
terribly to think. He just lay still, gazing fixedly at the jagged,
torn pane of glass. . . .

"They are all out, Doctor, except this one."

A woman was speaking close beside him, and his eyes slowly travelled
round in the direction of the voice. It was another woman--a woman he
hadn't seen before--swaying slightly as if she would drop.

"Good heavens! it's Billy Saunders!"