that although they were hit he felt no pain. One of the men asked him if he was only hit in the legs. He said, "Yes," but the man looked up at me and pulling up the boy's tunic showed me a hideous wound in his back. They carried him off happy and cheerful. Whether he ever recovered or not I do not know. If he did and ever sees this book, I wish he would write and tell me how he is. That was our last attack at Paschendaele. Our Division had taken its final objective. The next morning, the infantry were to come out of the line, so in the late afternoon I returned with some stretcher bearers. Several times shells came near enough to splatter us with mud, and here and there I turned aside to bury those for whom graves had just been prepared. At the front that day, a runner and I had joined in a brief burial service over the body of a gallant young officer lying where he fell on the side of a large shell-hole. As I uttered the words--"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord," it seemed to me that the lonely wind bore them over that region of gloom and death as (p. 229) if it longed to carry the message of hope far away to the many sad hearts in Canada whose loved ones will lie, until the end, in unknown graves at Paschendaele. CHAPTER XXIV. (p. 230) OUR LAST WAR CHRISTMAS. Our Division moved back to Barlin and I was once more established in my old billet. As our artillery were still at Ypres, I determined to go back on the following day to the Salient. I started in a car the next morning at six, and arrived at Talbot House, Poperinghe, in time to have breakfast with Padre Clayton, who was in charge of that splendid institution. Then I made my way to Ypres and found my son at his battery headquarters under the Cloth Hall Tower. It was a most romantic billet, for the debris of the ruins made a splendid protection from shells, and the stone-vaulted chambers were airy and commodious, much better than the underground cellars in which most of the men were quartered. The guns of the battery were forward in a very "unhealthy" neighbourhood. The officers and men used to take turns in going on duty there for twenty-four hours at a time. They found that quite long enough, as the forward area was continually exposed to shells and aeroplane attacks. I went on to visit our own field batteries, and found them distributed in a most desolate region. The mud was so deep that to step off the bath-mats meant sinking almost to the knees. In order to move the guns, planks had to be laid in front of them for a track, and the guns were roped and dragged along by the men. It was hard physical labour but they bore it, as they did other difficulties and dangers, with the utmost good humour. It was tiring enough merely to walk out to see them, without having anything else to do. What those men went through at that time no one can imagine. Just