What with one stoppage and another, and always going against the stream of heavy traffic, the thirty or forty kilometres must have taken us three or four hours; and there, as I was saying, were our poor pedestrians in port before us. It dispelled anxiety, if it did no more. But there was no end to our mean advantages; for the good easy men were making their beds upon the bare boards of the local Y.M.C.A., where we found them with the refugees from yet another group of forsaken huts, some eighty souls in all. They assured us there were no beds to be had in the place, that the Town Major had commandeered every mattress. But a cunning and influential veteran whispered another story in my private ear; and on the understanding that his surreptitious arrangements should include the mate of the Rest Hut, we adjourned with our friend in need to the best hotel in the town, whence after supper we were conducted to a still better billet. Here were not only separate beds, with sheets on them, but separate rooms with muslin curtains, marbled wash-stands, clocks and mirrors. It was true we had been forced to leave our heavy baggage at headquarters in our own poor town; and there had not been room in my despatch-case for any raiment for the night. But that was because I had refused to escape without my library records, whatever else was left behind. And the extensive contact with cool linen could not lessen the glow of virtue, on that solitary head, with which I stretched myself out in comfort inconceivable fifteen hours before. The day, beginning with the shock received from the Scottish Padre at the head of the dungeon stairs, had been packed with surprise, disappointment, irritation, mortal apprehension and emotion more varied than any day of mine had ever yet brought forth. But I was physically tired out, and a great deal more stolid about it all that night than I feel now, six months after the event. The silence, I remember, was the only thing that troubled me, after those three days and nights of almost incessant shell-fire. But it was a joyous trouble--while it lasted. Hardly had I closed my eyes upon the moonlit muslin curtains, when I woke with a start to that unaltered scene. The only difference was the slightly irregular hum of an enemy aeroplane, and the noise of bombs bursting all too near our perfect billet. IN THE DAY OF BATTLE