I remember that summer a strange thing happened. One day I found, and started painting, the remains of a Britisher and a Boche--just skulls, bones, garments--up by the trenches at Thiepval. I was all alone. My faithful Howlett was about half a mile away with the car. When I had been working about a couple of hours I felt strange. I cannot say (p. 040) even now what I felt. Afraid? Of what? The sun shone fiercely. There was not a breath of air. Perhaps it was that--a touch of the sun. So I stopped painting and went and sat on the trunk of a blown-up tree close by, when suddenly I was thrown on the back of my head on the ground. My heavy easel was upset, and one of the skulls went through the canvas. I got up and thought a lot, but came to the conclusion I had better just go on working, which I did, and nothing further strange happened. That night I happened to meet Joffroy, and told him about these skulls, and how peculiar one was, as it had a division in the frontal bone (the Britisher's). He said he would like to go and make a study of it; so I brought him out the next morning to the place, I myself working that day in Thiepval Wood, about half a mile further up the hill. I left him, saying I would come back and bring him lunch from the car, as it was difficult for him to get about. When I did get back I found him lying down, not very near the place, saying he felt very ill and he thought it was the smell "from those remains." He had done no work, and refused even to try to eat till we got a long way away from the skulls. I explained to him that there was no smell, and he said, "But didn't you see one has an eye still?" But I knew that all four eyes had withered away months before. There must have been something strange about the place. Most of these summer months John Masefield was working on the Somme battlefields. He preferred to work out there on the spot. He would get a lift out from Amiens in the morning on a motor or lorry, work all day by himself at some spot like La Boisselle, and walk back to the bridge at Albert and look out for a lift back to Amiens. If we worked out in this direction, on the way home our eye was always kept on the (p. 041) look-out for him; but really it never appeared to matter to him if he got back or not. I don't believe he minded where he was as long as he could ponder over things all alone. [Illustration: XV. _Adam and Eve at Peronne._]