Taking the chance of something happening within hearing, I made myself comfortable under some bushes near an open track leading through the lines of entanglements--so far as they could be located. There was an occasional sound of distant firing, outposts skirmishing; later in the night a single whistle and the sound of wheels grinding on tracks. What may have been a battery moved up on to a rise in the ground--seen as a shadow--about a quarter of a mile to the south. Here they seemed to stop, for there was silence again. Another long wait, and then the sound of cantering horses--some four or five--coming by the track from behind, inside the lines. Were they friends? They had passed me, and were in a line with the slight hill to the south, when little sparks of flame--half a dozen or so--glinted for a second out of the shadows. There was the slight "phit" of bullets through the leaves, and then the purr of a maxim. The canter broke into a sharp gallop down the track, following upon a single shouted order. Some heavier piece of ordnance coughed a short distance to the left. A reply came from far in front. A rattle, or rather an uneasy stir and crackle, like a wet bonfire, moved along the lines, and died away in the dark to the south. The sound of the horses' feet stopped--probably they had turned on to softer field-mould. And then silence again. But this time the sense of human presence stayed with me. The darkness seemed strained and alive with tense expectancy. The nights are short, and their cover shorter. I had to be content with only the sound-picture of the night skirmish. During the darkest hours before dawn we got back to Waterloo. On the southern edge of the battlefield itself I lay in the open, waiting for daylight, and listening for the sound of cannon commencing that should declare whether the Allies had really advanced, and were occupying some position that might still save Brussels and Belgium. Waterloo, Thursday Morning. A Shakespearean interlude this in the great Tragedy. Pistol, and Bardolph--what you will: the old story of the talkative coward! I have come up here, for the first hours of quiet in three weeks; to escape from the constant excitement of wondering whether the next pair of galloping lancers approaching across the fields are friend or enemy; to avoid the agitated nerves of towns, where nine-tenths are spending their time in trying to discover whether there is any truth or personal bearing in what the last tenth lets them grudgingly know. With all consideration for the necessity of secrecy, the thing is being overdone. No one can be got to believe that there is really no war going on; and for want of proper information imagination is beginning to run riot and nerves to snap. A little company of peasants, fine, independent, sturdy folk, now safe behind the great lines of armies. A jolly company, full of joke and laughter, but with an eye all the time on the distant hill of the great battlefield.