another two minutes they shot out clear of the town. A mile farther on a soldier warned them that the cross-roads were practically impassable, the roadway being broken and churned up by the heavy shells that all afternoon had been and were still at intervals falling upon it. So the Captain left the car and went on a-foot. He was nearly caught at the cross-roads, a shell fragment ripping a huge rent in his mackintosh just over his ribs. Before he reached the communication trenches too he had a highly uncomfortable minute with light high-explosive shells bursting round him while he crouched low in a muddy shell-crater. He reached the meeting-place at last, and spent an hour talking over plans and movements, and by the time he was ready to start back it was rapidly growing dark. It was completely dark before he found his way back to the road again, stumbling over the shell-holed ground, slipping and floundering through the mud, tripping once and falling heavily over some strands of barbed wire. When he found the car again he was so dirty and draggled and dishevelled and ragged—the barbed wire had taken the cap from his head and dropped it in a mud puddle, and left another tear or two in his mackintosh—so smeared and plastered with mud, that his driver at first failed to recognise him. In the town he found parties of the Sappers filling up the worst of the shell-holes and clearing away the debris that blocked the road where he had seen the house blown down, while the shells still screamed up and burst clattering over and amongst the houses, and bullets and splinters whistled and sang overhead, clashed and rattled on the causeway. He slept snatchily through the rest of the journey, waking many times as the car bumped badly, and once, when it dropped heavily into a shell-hole and bounced out again, flinging him bodily upwards until his head and shoulder banged solidly against the roof, taking half a minute to regain his scattered wits and dissipate a wild dream that the car had been fairly hit by a shell. And when at last he reached H.Q., crawled wearily out of the car, and staggered, half asleep and utterly worn out, into his room, he found there the other officer he had left to handle his work and the youthful aide humped over the table copying out reports. “Hullo,” said the senior, “you’re late. I say, you do look tucked up.” The Captain grunted. “Not more’n I feel,” he said, blinking at the light. “Thank the Lord my job’s over and everything fixed and ready so far’s this end goes.” “You’ve heard, I suppose!” said the other. “No? Baddish news. Our left has cracked and the Germ has a slice of their trenches. It upsets all our plans, and we’ve got ’em all to make over again.” The Captain stared blankly at him. “All to make ... that means all to-day’s work to begin and go through again. All to-day’s work—well, I’m ...”