The batman meanwhile brushed the caked mud from his clothes, and by the time he had had a bath and a shave and a bite of lunch he had begun to look more like himself. He seemed greatly depressed and talked little; he was like a man walking in his sleep and still in the throes of a gruesome nightmare. As they started off up the street of the village Jack remarked: "You don’t really want those coffins for which you asked me this morning, do you?" The colonel looked uncomprehendingly at him. Without answering the question, he asked in return: "Is there a florist’s shop in the village?" "Well, not exactly a ’florist’s,’" Jack replied, "but there is a place at the far end of the street where we might get some flowers." "Let us go there!" He spoke no further word until they arrived at the little house which Jack pointed out as a likely place. They entered the room and after some slight delay madame produced a vase filled with deep red roses. The colonel selected four of the largest, paid the woman and without a comment walked out with the roses in his hand. "Get me a motor car," he said to Jack; "we have several miles to go." The mechanical transport supplied them with a small car and they started on their strange mission. They pulled up a few miles back of the firing line and tramped silently across the fields, the colonel still clutching the roses, until they came to a spot where a number of Tommies were standing by four open graves which they had just dug. Beside the graves rested four shapeless bundles covered with blankets. "Do you know the burial service?" the colonel asked Jack suddenly. "I’m afraid I don’t remember it well enough to repeat it," Jack replied. "It doesn’t matter much," he went on thoughtfully, "I can say it myself." The men got ready with their ropes to lower the packages, one by one, into their respective resting places. It was all that was left of four gallant officers of a gallant battalion. The colonel repeated the burial service from memory, word for word: "Ashes to ashes—dust to dust..." But before the earth closed over them he stood at the foot of each grave, silent as the grave itself, and dropping a rose tenderly upon each stood at attention, his right hand at the "salute." As the earth fell dully upon the blankets he turned away with tears in his eyes and said simply: "Poor brave chaps! I loved them all! God keep them. They did their duty!" It was ten o’clock at night as Reggy and I, crossing the tracks at the _Gare Maritime_ in Boulogne, saw a battalion which had just disembarked from the cross-channel boat drawn up on the quay, ready to entrain for the front. We walked toward them in a spirit of idle curiosity—for the sight was one to which we were well accustomed—when, under the dim light of a partly shaded street lamp, we noticed that they were from home. We approached a little group of officers who were chatting animatedly together, and among them found several whom we knew.