been a tragic business, and I felt joyful that they had not waited longer. Other men crept up from the ground below where I stood, steered an erratic course, took cover in old German trenches, and then made short, sharp rushes till they dropped also into the sinister street. Later in the afternoon the enemy barraged his old line of trenches with heavy crumps--which is a way he has when he leaves a place--and presently shells began to fall unpleasantly near to where I stood, getting closer as time passed. I found it wise to shift three times, but on scaling the high ridge of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette again I lingered to look at the great picture of war outspread below--that long seven-mile stretch of miners' villages crowding densely up to Lens--the great outbursts of red and black smoke between the slag-heaps and chimneys away to the battlefield of Loos, across which sunlight and shadows chased in long bars--and our shell-fire heavy around Lens church and far beyond where enemy's troops and transport were hurrying in retreat. Overhead there was the loud droning of many aeroplanes and flights of invisible shells, shrill-voiced as they travelled with frightful speed. * * * * * LATER The weather has changed again since yesterday, and there is no blue in the sky to-day and no sunshine, but cold rain-storms, cloaking all the line of battle in shrouds of mist. Fires are still burning in Lens, the grey smoke is drifting across the mine-fields, and every hour there are big explosions, showing that the German pioneers are still busy destroying all the wealth of machinery in the city and blowing up the roads before leaving. New prisoners describe all this frankly enough. Down one mine-shaft they flung 20,000 hand-grenades. They have enormous stores of explosives of every kind for this purpose, because this mining district was crammed with German stores. They had to leave Liévin in such haste that they could neither carry away this ammunition nor destroy all of it, and vast quantities of bombs, trench-mortars and shells have fallen into our hands.