he Flying Corps arrive. Bring these two
bodies into the camp on stretchers."

Five minutes later they sat down to tea and an unopened mail. The
farmer had resumed his ploughing--the football enthusiasts their game.
Twenty-five Lewis guns and twelve Vickers sections were all composing
reports stating that their particular weapon had done the deed, and
somebody was putting another fog cloud on Kemmel.

In fact, the only real difference in the scene after those ten short
minutes was that by the ruins of a deck chair two German airmen with
their faces covered lay very still on stretchers. . . .

II

Two hours later. Vane handed his steel helmet to his batman and swung
himself into the saddle on his old grey mare. There was touch of Arab
in her, and she had most enormous feet. But she fulfilled most of the
requirements a man looks for in a war horse, which are not of necessity
those he requires in a mount with the Grafton. She scorned guns--she
repudiated lorries, and he could lay the reins on her neck without her
ceasing to function. She frequently fell down when he did so;
but--_c'est la guerre_. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as he
hacked out of the camp, waving a farewell hand at a badminton four, and
headed for Poperinghe.

Poperinghe lay about a mile up the road towards his destination, and
Vane had known it at intervals for over three years. He remembered it
when it had been shelled in April '15 at the time of the first gas
attack, and the inhabitants had fled in all directions. Then gradually
it had become normal again, until, after the Passchendaele fighting of
1917, it had excelled itself in gaiety. And now in May 1918 it was
dead once more, with every house boarded up and every window shuttered.
The big cobbled square; the brooding, silent churches, the single
military policeman standing near his sand-bagged sentry-box--and in the
distance the rumble of a wagon going past the station--such was
Poperinghe as Vane saw it that evening.

A city of ghosts--deserted and empty, and as the old grey mare walked
sedately through the square. Vane felt that he understood the dead
airman's smile.

Sometimes a random shot would take effect, but the bag was soon
removed. That very afternoon a driver with his two horses had been hit
direct. The man, or what was left of him, had been removed--only the
horses remained, and a red pool coated with grey dust. The mare edged
warily around them, and