"No furniture broken, no damage done to the room, Bill?" "No," said I. "Why?" "Well, look here, Bill, it's like this," said Tom. "Fred and I are puzzled as to exactly what happened. Fred, tell him what happened to you, and then I'll tell him about myself." Fred rubbed his chin and started: "Well, Bill, the first thing I remember was that I found myself walking along a country road, and I met a M.P. man. Said I: 'Can you please direct me to the Gare du Nord?' 'Straight on,' said he, 'and you'll find it on your left. It's about a twenty-minute walk.' So I went straight on, and sure enough I came to the Gare du Nord, and I came on here and found Tom juggling with the wheel of the old ambulance with its radiator against the wall." "Yes," said Tom, "and look here, bloody old Bill, I had spent half the night juggling with death with that wheel--thank goodness the engine wasn't going. Then Fred woke me up. What do you make of it all, Bill?" I couldn't make anything of it, so I dressed and we had breakfast and they went off to their aerodrome in the Somme mud. After this we became great friends and we had many happy evenings, (p. 086) in some of which Tom looked for a "spot of bother," and Fred warned him "it was a bad show." On "good nights for the troops," which meant that the weather was impossible for bombing (they were night-bombers), they would come into Amiens for dinner. These nights were "not devoid of attraction," and on the "bad nights for the troops" I would often dine at the aerodrome and see the raiders off. It was uncanny, these great birds starting off into the blackness--to what? Tom and Fred lived together in a little hut in the Somme mud, off the Peronne Road, which they called "Virtue Villa," and when I worked anywhere away up this old East-West Road, I never could resist visiting "Virtue Villa" on the way back. "Virtue Villa" with its blazing stove, its two bunks--Tom's below, Fred's upstairs--its photographs (especially the one of Fred with the M.C. smile), the biscuit-box seats and the good glasses of whisky--truly "Virtue Villa," with its Tom and Fred, was not "devoid of attraction" on a cold October evening, with the rain splashing on the water in the old Somme shell-holes. They were a great couple and devoted to each other. One could not eat, drink or be merry without the other, yet they were completely different. Fred was a calm, thoughtful English boy, very much in love and longing to get married; but Tom was just a heap of fun, a man who had travelled to many corners of the earth, but at heart was still a romping school-boy. About this time George Hoidge's squadron came to a place near Albert, and I had the pleasure of seeing Colonel Bloomfield there again, still as hearty and full of fire as ever. He was going to sit, but things began to happen too quickly then, and I never got a chance of (p. 087) painting him. [Illustration: XXXVII. _Albert._]