"Copy of a letter sent to General John Vaughan Campbell by favour of Monsieur Tudesq. Will you have the very great kindness to bring this expression of my admiration to the General? Accept also my congratulations upon your truly heart-stirring narrative. "J. F." CHAPTER III. MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE. 7th November. "So you knew those people that have just gone by in the carriage, Lovel." "How should I know them?" "Then why did you let them past you?" "It's true, I wasn't strict enough. But they roared out such a G.H.Q.[C] at me that I didn't dare to stop them." [C] General Head Quarters. "Wave your lantern, Lovel. Here's another carriage." So chatted, during this night of 7th November, on the road to Bapaume, two of His Majesty's Tommies. They were two scrubby little Scotsmen. Each wore his tam-o'-shanter falling over one eye. The night was almost beautiful; the sky covered with fleecy clouds, among which, like a great liquid eye, the moon showed herself now and then. We were going to spend the night in the English lines. Very few sounds are to be heard. The farmers' dogs have long abandoned this unpeaceful country, and the crowing of the cocks, those earliest victims of every war, has even longer been stilled. Silence reigns. How is it, then, that this silence seems menacing? It only seems so. Stop a moment and listen. Do you not now hear in the darkness a host of little sounds? An invisible world is moving about us. Listen! Yes, there is the sound of many feet on the road--not the brisk tramp of the parade ground, but the steps of the poor souls who are fighting their way through the mud. It is as if ten thousand little wings were flapping. All lights are out. The long stream of motor-cars moves upon the road in perfect order. Midnight. Now the preparations for the advance are at their height. Now is the time when the reliefs come up, the blessed hour, so long expected by those who quit the trenches, by those who go into them so bravely met. In their English helmets, which look like basins upside-down, caked with mud--already--to the eyes, with their rifles shouldered, slung, or carried in the hand, but each one carefully protected by its canvas cover, smoking their pipes, their chests thrown forward against the weight of their bursting haversacks, steady of step and bright of eye, the Tommies go forward to relieve their friends. When they feel the need of a rest the men in khaki, quite regardless of the mud, throw themselves down on the sopping earth, and man, clothing, and soil become one. In this country of the dead you may hardly distinguish shadows from the objects which throw them.