So after an early breakfast Hunt comes round, with Swallow for me and Jezebel for himself, haversack rations for us both, and feeds for the horses. I feel very much on the qui-vive, as I haven't seen that particular part before. A grey warm day. Some miles to go due south before we get near our destination. As we approach it we find, as usual, roads and railways being made, and fatigue-parties repainting tents with blotches and stripes. Then come notices, "No traffic along this road," or, "This road liable to be shelled," with signboards at every corner, "To ----" or some other place in the trenches. Sometimes the notices say "Something-or-other Avenue" or "Burlington Arcade," etc.--nicknames, but recognized officially. And all the time we are passing endless lorries and Red Cross waggons and troops and dug-out camps. As we get closer the signs of shelling get worse, and children are seen no longer. Old men, though, occasionally observed working in a field quite unperturbed. Rarely a French soldier or an interpreter with his sphinx badges. All this quite lost on Hunt, who has "quite got used to abroad, thank you, sir." He is eating chocolate or something, half a horse-length (the correct distance) behind me. Now on our left is a famous ridge, with a ruined village on the top. Not, you understand, a ridge in the Swiss sense, but rather in the Norfolk sense. I should like to go and see it, but it's too open to the Boche's eye, and I don't want to dismount yet. So we curve round right-handed a bit. Aha! "To ----." Nous voilà! Follow down this muddy track under cover of the ridge, and we arrive at ----. A wood just beyond the little town. Oh, mournful wood! "Bois épais, redouble ton ombre." But they say the anemones and the primroses were as merry and sweet as ever this spring. Bravo little wood! The village is, of course, evacuated by all inhabitants. The houses all in ruins. By now all the remaining windows have been boarded up and the blown-out doors barred against prying eyes. Here we are at an old estaminet called "Aux Coeurs joyeux." There's hardly anything but the sign left. At the cross-roads in the centre of the town is the church, so dismal. No roof, pillars broken and lying about the floor amongst débris of broken images, chairs, and muddy rubble. [Sidenote: PLOEGSTEERT]