brought us half a dozen bottles
of good wine--three bottles of red and three of white--but the larder
remains empty. I do not know exactly what a larder is; but if it is as
empty as I am at the present moment it must remind itself of a haunted
house.

Eleven-forty. A big van full of wounded Germans has arrived. From the
windows we can see it distinctly. The more seriously hurt lie on the
bed of the wagon, under the hood. The man who drives has one leg in
splints; and of the two who sit at the tail gate, holding rifles
upright, one has a bandaged head, and the other has an arm in a sling.

Unless a German is so seriously crippled as to be entirely unfitted for
service he manages to do something useful. There are no loose ends and
no waste to the German military system; I can see that. The soldiers in
the street cheer the wounded as they pass and the wounded answer by
singing Die Wacht am Rhein feebly.

One poor chap raises his head and looks out. He appears to be almost
spent, but I see his lips move as he tries to sing. You may not care
for the German cause, but you are bound to admire the German spirit--the
German oneness of purpose.

Noon. As the Texas darky said: "Dinnertime fur some folks; but just
twelve o'clock fur me!" Again I smell something cooking upstairs. On
the mantel of the shabby little interior sitting room, where we spend
most of our time sitting about in a sad circle, is a little black-and-
tan terrier pup, stuffed and mounted, with shiny glass eyes--a family
pet, I take it, which died and was immortalized by the local
taxidermist. If I only knew what that dog was stuffed with I would take
a chance and eat him.

I have a fellow feeling for Arctic explorers who go north and keep on
going until they run out of things to eat. I admire their heroism and
sympathize with their sufferings, but I deplore their bad judgment.
There are grapes growing on trellises in the little courtyard at the
back, but they are too green for human consumption. I speak
authoritatively on this subject, having just sampled one.

Two p.m. Tried to take a nap, but failed. Hansen found a soiled deck
of cards behind a pile of books on the mantelpiece, and we all cheered
up, thinking of poker; but it was a Belgian deck of thirty-two cards,
all the pips below the seven-spot being eliminated. Poker with that deck
would be a hazardous pursuit.

McCutcheon remarks casually that he wonders what would happen if
somebo