For the rest of the way that he walked back to the First Aid Post the words of the verse kept running over in his pain-numbed and weary mind--”... where the grapes of wrath are stored; trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath ...” over and over again. And when at last they came to the trench that led to the underground dressing-station just as the guns had waked again to a fresh spasm of fury that set the sky ablaze with their flashes and the air roaring to their deep, rolling thunders, Kentucky’s mind went back to where the great shells would be falling, pictured to him the flaming fires, the rending, shattering crashes, the tearing whirlwinds of destruction, that would be devastating the German lines. “Grapes of wrath,” he whispered. “God, yes--bitter grapes of wrath.” And in his fancy the guns caught up the word from his mouth, and tossed it shouting in long-drawn, shaking thunder: “Wrath--wrath--_wrath_!” CHAPTER XV CASUALTIES A deep and comparatively uninjured German dug-out had been adapted for use as a dressing-station. Its entrance lay in a little cup-shaped depression with a steep, sloping bank behind it, and the position of this bank and the entrance opening out of it away from the British lines had probably been the saving of it from shell fire. Kentucky groped his way down the dark stairway, and the bearers followed with Pug on the stretcher. The stair was horribly steep, built in high and narrow wooden steps which were coated with thick, slippery mud, and it was with some difficulty that the stretcher was brought down. The stair opened out direct into a large, well-built dug-out with planked floor, walls and roof, and beyond it again a narrow passage led to a further room, also well built and plank lined, but much longer, and so narrow that it barely gave room for men to be laid across it. This chamber, too, was filled with wounded, some of them stretched at full length, others squatting close packed about the floor. The first room was used by the doctors, because, being more widely built, it gave room for a couple of tables. There were three doctors there, two working at the tables, the third amongst the cases huddled along the wall. Kentucky took his place, leaning back against the wall and waiting his turn, but Pug was carried almost at once to one of the tables. “Have you heard anything about how the whole show is going?” Kentucky asked one of the orderlies. “Not a word,” said the man. “Leastways, we’ve heard so many words you can’t believe any of ’em. Some o’ the casualties tells us one thing an’ some another. But we’ve bumped the Hun back a lump, that’s sure. They all tell us that.”