"You haven’t been here all the time, have you?" he asked. "We went down to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now. I’m just going to take another sip of the ’Scotch wine’ and then turn in for the night; but I’m not going to undress." Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground. That was enough to get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to run or not to run?" in the affirmative. I slipped on my boots without fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond farewell. There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought refuge there. "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by the side of a sergeant. Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing. No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter. We waited for some time and nothing further happened. The night was cold and I began to shiver in my pajamas. So I started to look about for a place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me and the little brown tent. There was a path across a shallow bit of trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his bed. He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet. He could, he said, sleep as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the night. He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him to do so. There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants were quite safe somewhere. On striking a light to get my blankets, I noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel bullets had missed me only by inches. It had been a close shave and it was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.