One of my poilus had found the bed so inviting that he had appropriated it. Of course, when he discovered my identity, he flooded me with fantastic excuses. However, we spread the bed out a little and slept soundly beside each other for eight hours on end. That morning we had moved on a short distance, via Douaumont, Fleury, Eix, across a countryside covered either with mud or trees, dominated by the forts with their grass-grown glacis and cupolas. We had crossed the line from Verdun to Conflans, marching ankle-deep in wet coal-dust. Before a smoke-blackened house at the barrier some enormous girasols thrust forth their yellow and black corollæ, their colours rendered more brilliant by the recent rain. We passed some squads of territorials with their tools on their shoulders, artillerymen from the big fortresses, slow-moving country wagons laden with forage, tree-trunks and wine casks. Wooden huts had been erected along the roadside, each of which had a name inscribed on it, such as: Happy Villa; The Good Children's Castle; Villa Piccolo, etc. Verses adorned some of them, not of high poetical attainment, but something after this fashion: "You never see us weeping here-- Often you'll see us drinking beer. War may not be the best of fun, But we'll stick it till we've smashed the Hun!" Some of these cabins were constructed of logs and roofed with pine branches, the most thickly-tufted ones, of course. The points of the spikes were turned downwards to prevent the rain trickling through to the layer of thatch below. The huts, erected at the owners' caprice, were much scattered, and followed the meanderings of the rising ground to the summit of a slight elevation dominating the road to the right. The doors, wide opened and yawning, revealed a dark, mysterious space, and made it appear almost as if the side of the slope was riddled with fathomless holes, while the bundles of brushwood made irregular green blots, clear and bright in the neighbourhood of the roadway, growing darker and vaguer as they approached the elevation, finally to vanish completely amid the undergrowth. At length we arrived at Moulinville, where the quartermaster discovered an empty house, not yet too filthy for habitation, because the owner of it, on mobilization, had been stationed close at hand, and came over from time to time. Indeed, he turned up while we were dining--a huge "Meusien," with a high colour, stiff, cropped hair and looking gigantic in his artilleryman's cloak. He personally conducted us to a room, the floor of which creaked, and pointing to a bed informed us with tremendous pride and dignity that: "You are welcome to sleep there, if you wish, but I shall not be able to supply you with sheets."