Beyond the silent countryside rose a line of hills. They seemed to start and finish abruptly--an excrescence in the all-pervading flatness. On the top of the near end of the line, clear cut against the sky, the tower and spires of a great building; at the far end, on a hill separated--almost isolated--from the main ridge, a line of stumps, gaunt tooth-pick stumps standing stiffly in a row. There was no sign of life on the hills, no sign of movement. They were dead and cold even in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Especially the isolated one at the far end with its row of sentinel trees. There was something ghostly about it--something furtive. And then suddenly a great column of yellow smoke rose slowly from its centre and spread like a giant mushroom. Another and another appeared, and the yellow pall rolled down the side twisting and turning, drifting into the air and eddying over the dark, grim slope. Gradually it blotted out that isolated hill, like fog reeking round a mountain top, and as one watched it, fascinated, a series of dull booms came lazily through the air. "Jerry gettin' it in the neck on Kemmel." Two men passing by were regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not cease talking to himself. "Derek scooped the bally lot as usual." An officer appeared at the entrance of a tin structure in one corner of the field with a bundle of letters in his hand. "Look at the dirty dog there--sleeping like a hog--in the only decent chair." He disappeared inside to emerge again in a moment with a badminton racket and a shuttlecock. "On the bulldog--one round rapid fire." He fired and with a loud snort the sleeper awoke. "You are charged with conduct to the prejudice, etc.," said the marksman severely, "in that you did spread alarm and despondency amongst the troops by disguising yourself as a disease and making noises indicative of pain." Derek Vane stretched himself and stood up. "We are feeling well, thank you--and require nourishment. Does tea await me, and if not--why not?" He took his mail and glanced through it. "How they love me, dear old boy! What it is to be young and good looking, and charm. . . ." There was a loud shout and the deck chair became the centre of a struggling mob. Shortly afterwards a noise of ripping canvas announced that it had acted as deck chairs have acted before when five people sit on them at the same moment. "Look out, you mugs, you've broken it." Vane's voice came dimly from the ground. "And my face is in an ants' nest." "Are you good looking and charming?" demanded an inexorable voice. "No. Get off, Beetle; you've got bones on you like the human skeleton at Barnum's." "What are you like?" pursued the same inexorable voice. "Horrible," spluttered Vane. "A walking nightmare; a loathly dream." "It is well--you may arise."