And there he found things moving. As yet no one was quite sure what had happened; but he found a solemn conclave of Army Service Corps officers attached to his division, and from them he gathered twenty or thirty of the conflicting rumours that were flying round. One thing, anyway, was clear: the Huns were not triumphantly marching on Calais--yet. It was just as a charming old boy of over fifty, who had perjured his soul over his age and had been out since the beginning--a standing reproach to a large percentage of the so-called youth of England--it was just as he suggested a little dinner in that hospitable town, prior to going up with the supply lorries, that with a droning roar a twelve-inch shell came crashing into the square.... That night at 11 p.m. Dick stepped out of another car into a ploughed field just behind the little village of Woesten, and, having trodden on his major's face and unearthed his servant, lay down by the dying fire to get what sleep he could. Now and again a horse whinnied near by; a bit rattled, a man cursed; for the unit was ready to move at a moment's notice and the horses were saddled up. The fire died out--from close by a battery was firing, and the sky was dancing with the flashes of bursting shells like summer lightning flickering in the distance. And with his head on a sharp stone and another in his back Dick O'Rourke fell asleep and dreamed of--but dreams are silly things to describe. It was just as he'd thrown the hors-d'oeuvres at the head-waiter of Ciro's, who had suddenly become the hated German rival, and was wiping the potato salad off Moyra's face, which it had hit by mistake, with the table-cloth, that with a groan he turned on his other side--only to exchange the stones for a sardine tin and a broken pickle bottle. Which is really no more foolish than the rest of life nowadays.... * * * * * And now for a moment I must go back and, leaving our hero, describe shortly the events that led up to the sending of the wire that recalled him.