urgee, flew straight out in the breeze from
half-way up the cable, and the basket, looking absurdly small, hung
down like a black dot below the balloon.

Peace was the keynote of the whole situation. In front the country lay
stretched out, with its hedges and trees, its fields and farmhouses.
In certain places there ran long rows of poles with strips of brown
material stretched between them, which a spectator would rightly
conclude was camouflage erected to screen the roads. Only from what?
Where was the Boche in this atmosphere of sleep and quiet?

Beyond the silent countryside rose a line of hills. They seemed to
start and finish abruptly--an excrescence in the all-pervading
flatness. On the top of the near end of the line, clear cut against
the sky, the tower and spires of a great building; at the far end, on a
hill separated--almost isolated--from the main ridge, a line of stumps,
gaunt tooth-pick stumps standing stiffly in a row. There was no sign
of life on the hills, no sign of movement. They were dead and cold
even in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Especially the isolated
one at the far end with its row of sentinel trees. There was something
ghostly about it--something furtive.

And then suddenly a great column of yellow smoke rose slowly from its
centre and spread like a giant mushroom. Another and another appeared,
and the yellow pall rolled down the side twisting and turning, drifting
into the air and eddying over the dark, grim slope. Gradually it
blotted out that isolated hill, like fog reeking round a mountain top,
and as one watched it, fascinated, a series of dull booms came lazily
through the air.

"Jerry gettin' it in the neck on Kemmel." Two men passing by were
regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple
bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not
cease talking to himself.

"Derek scooped the bally lot as usual." An officer appeared at the
entrance of a tin structure in one corner of the field with a bundle of
letters in his hand. "Look at the dirty dog there--sleeping like a
hog--in the only decent chair."

He disappeared inside to emerge again in a moment with a badminton
racket and a shuttlecock. "On the bulldog--one round rapid fire." He
fired and with a loud snort the sleeper awoke.

"You are charged with conduct to the prejudice, etc.," said the
marksman severely, "in that you did spread alarm and despondency
amongst t