They talked a few minutes longer, and then the Colonel moved to the door. The “office” was a square shanty built of empty ammunition boxes, with a tarpaulin spread over for a roof. It was furnished with a roughly-built deal table, littered with papers held in clips, stuck on files, or piled in heaps, seats made of 18-pounder boxes, a truckle-bed and blankets in one corner, a telephone on a shelf beside the table. Light and ventilation were provided by the leaving-out of odd boxes here and there in the building up of the walls, and by a wide doorway without a door to it. The whole thing was light and airy enough, but, because it was one of the hot spells of summer, it was warm enough inside to be uncomfortable. Everything in the place—table, papers, bed, seats—was gritty to the touch and thick with dust. The two men stood in the doorway a minute, looking out on the depleted stacks of ammunition boxes piled in a long curving row beside the roadway that ran in off the main road, swung round, and out on to it again. A few men were working amongst the boxes, their coats off and their grey shirt sleeves rolled up, and a stream of traffic ran steadily past on the main road. “Pretty quiet here now,” said the Colonel. “But, by the sound of it, things are moving brisk enough up there. You’ll get your turn presently, I expect.” “I expect so, sir,” said the Lieutenant; “especially if the yarn is true that we push ’em again at daybreak to-morrow.” “Come over and get your tea before the lorries come in, if you’ve time,” said the Colonel, and moved off. The Lieutenant stood a moment longer listening to the steady roll and vibrating rumble of the guns up in the line, and then, at a sharp birr-r-r from the telephone, turned sharply into the office. The lorries began to arrive just after sunset, rumbling up the main road and swinging off in batches as there was room for them in the curved crescent of track that ran through the dump and back to the main road. As quickly as they were brought into position the dump working party jerked off the tail-boards and fell to hauling the boxes of shell out and piling them in neat stacks along a low platform which ran by the edge of the dump track. The dump was a distributing centre mainly for field artillery, so that the shells were 18-pounder and 4·5 howitzer, in boxes just comfortably large enough for a man to lift and heave about. As the light failed and the darkness crept down, candle lamps began to appear, flitting about amongst the piled boxes, dodging in and out between the lorries, swinging down the track to guide the drivers and show them the way in one by one. Vickers and the Army Service Corps officer in charge of the M.T. lorries stood on a stack of boxes mid-way round the curve, or moved about amongst the workers directing and hastening the work.