“And they say we haven’t a sense of humour,” said Charles Fortune modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne. Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune’s oration, knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy of his. Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution. “That champagne is pretty bad. I’d ‘ware headaches, if I were you, young’un.” “It’s good enough,” said Clatworthy. “Anything to put me in the right spirit.” There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily at any joke of Fortune’s. Presently he turned his attention to me, and began talking excitedly in a low monologue. “Funny to think it’s the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a lifetime since I came out in ‘14. I remember the first night, when I was sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who’d been knocked out. It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round Hooge. I detrained at Vlamertinghe. ‘Can any one tell me the way to Hooge?’ I asked one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at Piccadilly Circus. He looked at me in a queer way, and said, ‘It’s the same way to hell, sir. Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of the Menin Gate and along the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you trust to luck. Some young gentlemen never get no further.’ I damned his impertinence and went on, till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, where I just missed an eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. Shocking mess it made. ‘The same way to hell,’ I kept saying, until I fell into a shell-hole along the Menin Road. But, d’you know, the fellow was wrong, after all.” “How?” I asked. Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much amused. “Why, _that_ wasn’t the way to hell. It was the other way.” I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk. “What other way?” “Behind the lines--in the back areas. I should have been all right if I had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to the devil.” “Not as bad as that,” I said. “Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the flame, “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable along the way to hell. There was little Maiguérite in Amiens--such a kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with Marguérite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked the flowers of life and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves beyond the forest.” He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words: “The howling of the wolves!”