Confound it! The stove was smoking like fury. Pah! The flues were all full of soot. Dixon was rather an expert on stoves, and said that all that was needed was a brush. Where had all the servants disappeared to? Why wasn’t someone there? I opened the door into our bedroom--a cold blast struck me in the face. In the middle of the room, unopened, sat our two valises, like desert islands in a sea of red tiles. “Hang it all, this is the limit,” I said, and ran out into the street, and into the next house, where the servants’ quarters were. And there, in the middle of a pile of half-packed boxes, stood Gray, eating a piece of bread. Now I discovered afterwards that the boxes had just been brought in by Cody and Lewis, that Davies and Richards had gone after the coal, and were at that moment staggering under the weight of it on their way from the stores, and that Gray could not do anything more, having unpacked the boxes, until the coal came. But I did not grasp these subtle details of the interior economy of the servants’ hall, and I broke out into a real hot strafe. Why should Gray be standing there eating, while the officers shivered and starved? I returned to Dixon, and found Clark and Nicolson there; and together we all fumed. Then in came the post-corporal with an accumulation of parcels, and we stopped fuming. “By Jove,” I exclaimed, a few minutes later. “The hare. I had forgotten le--what is it, lièvre, lèvre? I forget. Never mind. Lewis, bring the hare along, and ask Madame in your best manner if she would do us the honour of cooking it for us. To-night, now.” Presently Madame came in, with Lewis standing rather sheepishly behind. She delivered a tornado of very fluent French: “eau-de-vie,” “eau-de-vie,” was all I could disentangle. “Eau-de-vie?” I asked her. “Pourquoi eau-de-vie?” “Brandy,” explained Dixon. “I know that,” said I (who did not know that eau-de-vie was brandy?) “Brandy,” said Dixon, “to cook the hare with. That’s all she wants. Oui, oui, Madame. Eau-de-vie. Tout de suite. The doctor’s got brandy. Send Lewis along to the doctor to ask him to dinner, and borrow a little brandy.” So Lewis was despatched, and returned with a little brandy, but the doctor could not come. “Never mind,” we said. Meanwhile some tea was on the table, and bully and bread and butter; there was no sugar, however. Richards smiled and said the rats had eaten it all in 71 North, but Davies was buying some. Whenever anything was missing, these rats had eaten it, just as they were responsible for men’s equipment and packs getting torn, and their emergency rations lost. In many cases the excuse was quite a just one; but when it came to rats running off with canteen lids, our sympathy for the rat-ridden Tommy was not always very strong. To-day, a new reason was found for the loss of three teaspoons. “Lost in the scuffle, sir, the night of the raid,” was the answer given to the demand for an explanation. “What scuffle?” I asked.