If he went on like this he would have to see a Medical Officer, and they would send him down to the Base, and he would find his job filled up, and have to go elsewhere and start all over fresh, trying to do something that was not desperately boring or wholly useless. He had been doing too much, going up at night for “stunts,” and working in Q. office all day. He would have to slack off a bit. By the time he got back to Divisional H.Q. the car stood ready. The feelings of one who, having been hauled out of the infantry, had then to return to the Forward Areas, were curiously mixed. Of course no one wanted to be shelled or bombed, to live where the comforts of life were unpurchasable, and the ordinary means of locomotion out of use. And yet--and yet--there was a curious feeling of going home. That great rowdy wood and canvas and corrugated iron town, miles deep and nearly a hundred miles long, was where one belonged. That atmosphere of obvious jokes and equally obvious death, disinfectant, tobacco, mules, and wood smoke had become one’s life, one’s right and natural environment. His companion on this joyless ride was Major Stevenage, the A.P.M. of the Division, an ex-cavalry officer of the regular army, in appearance and mentality a darker and grimmer edition of Colonel Birchin. Dormer showed him the Vanderlynden dossier as they bowled along. He surveyed it with the weariness of a professional to whom an amateur exhibits a “masterpiece.” “Colonel Birchin thinks it’s rape, does he?” “Yes!” “He’s wrong, of course. Q. office always are! What do you think it is yourself?” “A nasty snag. What happened doesn’t matter. You and I could settle it for forty francs. But the French have got hold of it. It’s become official.” “What do you suggest?” Major Stevenage put in his monocle. “We must go and see the Maire, and get it withdrawn. Let’s see. Hondebecq? It’s the Communal Secretary Blanquart we must see. Shrewd fellow and all on our side. These schoolmasters hate the peasants.” Dormer knew the area well. Hondebecq was the typical village of French Flanders. That is to say, it was a cluster of cottages in which _rentiers_--peasants who had scraped a few savings out of the surrounding fields--lived on about forty pounds a year English; in its centre, a paved _grand’ place_ held a few modest shops, a huge high-shouldered church, carefully refaced with red brick, and a big, rambling “Estaminet de la Mairie,” next to the village school. It was here that they found Blanquart, Communal Secretary, schoolmaster, land surveyor, poor man’s lawyer, Heaven only knows what other functions he used to combine. He was the only man in the Commune handy with pen and paper, and this fact must have substantially added to his income. But, like all his kind, he could not forget that he came from Dunkirk or Lille; he had moments when his loneliness got the better of his pride and he would complain bitterly of the “sacred peasants.”