The villa is being ruined by us I fear, but I have a woman to clean it, and I am trying to keep it in order. It is a cold little place for we have no fires. We can, by pumping, get a little very cold water, and there is a tap in the bath-room and one basin at which everyone tries to wash and shave at the same time. We get our meals at a butcher's shop, where there is a large room which we more than fill. The lights of the town are all out by 6 o'clock, so we grope about, but there is a lamp in our dining-room. When we come out we have to pass through the butcher's shop, and one may find oneself running into the interior of a sheep. We get up about 7 o'clock and fight for the basin. Then we walk round to the butcher's shop and have breakfast at 7.30. Most people think they start off for the day's work at 8, but it is generally quite 10 o'clock before all the brown-hooded ambulances with their red crosses have moved out of the yard. We do not as a rule meet again till dinner-time, and even then many of the party are absent. They come in at all times, very dirty and hungry, and the greeting is always the same, "Did you get many?"--_i.e._, "Have you picked up many wounded?" One night Dr. Munro got bowled over by the actual air force created by a shell, which however did not hit him. Yesterday Mr. Secher was shot in the leg. I am amazed that not more get hit. They are all very cheery about it. To-day we heard that a jolly French boy with white teeth, who has been very good at making coffee at our picnic lunches, was put up against a tree and shot at daybreak. Someone had made him drunk the night before, and he had threatened an officer with a revolver. [Page Heading: A DRAMATIC INCIDENT] _7 November. St. Malo les Bains._--Lady Bagot turned up here to-day, and I lunched with her at the Hotel des Arcades. Just before lunch a bomb was dropped from a Taube overhead, and hardly had we sat down to lunch when a revolver shot rang through the room. A French officer had discharged his pistol by mistake, and he lay on the floor in his scarlet trews. The scene was really the Adelphi, and as the man had only slightly hurt himself one was able to appreciate the scenic effect and to notice how well staged it was. A waiter ran for me. I ran for dressings to one of our ambulances, and we knelt in the right attitude beside the hero in his scarlet clothes, while the "lady of the bureau" begged for the bullet! In the evening Lady Bagot and I worked at the railway-sheds till 3 a.m. One immense shed had 700 wounded in it. The night scene, with its inevitable accompaniment of low-turned lamps and gloom, was one I shall not forget. The railway-lines on each side of the covered platform were spread with straw, and on this wounded men, bedded down like cattle, slept. There were rows of them sleeping feet to feet, with straw over them to make a covering. I didn't hear a grumble, and hardly a groan. Most of them slept heavily.