Here we remained for some weeks, until again disturbed by the order to change position. Again everything has to be done by night, the guns hauled out of the pits, the thousand and one small stores necessary to the interior economy of the battery packed each in its proper place, the heavy platforms raised and loaded into the lorries. The ease with which any particular article can be mislaid under those circumstances is incredible. Relative weight or importance seems to have no bearing on the matter at all, one is just as likely, upon arriving at dawn in some unknown land, to discover that one has left behind a spare wheel or a handcart or even a battery quartermaster-sergeant, as one is to find a small screwdriver missing. After a while the whole business becomes a nightmare in which one is condemned eternally to spend one's time counting handspikes and lorries and men, and to make the total utterly different every time. And then the line of march! A procession of heavy lorries, some drawing the guns, the rest laden with men, stores and ammunition, looking for all the world like some huge travelling circus, sets off upon a dark foggy night, carrying of course no lights, over roads already laden to their utmost capacity with troops and supply columns, and plentifully besprinkled with shell holes. At the head of the procession rides a group of officers in a car, one of whom has possibly been over the road once by daylight, and about the length of the convoy are scattered here and there men wrestling with recalcitrant motor-bicycles, which they vainly try to restrict to the speed of the column, perhaps four or five miles an hour. Much can happen under these circumstances. Perhaps the rearmost lorry has to stop for adjustment, and by the time the word has passed along the line the car at the head is far away, and the column strung out over a mile or so of road. Or the foremost lorry commences to boil frantically and slows down, whereupon the remainder tread upon one another's heels, until it stops altogether, when the column forms a compact mass that nothing can attempt to pass. Or the geographical instinct of the leader of the expedition fails at a cross-roads, and recourse has to be had to the sentry who stands there. One of two things then happens. Either the man does not know the way and says so, or he does not know the way and with the utmost positiveness declares the route to be by the first road that strikes his fancy. Those to whom the former of these certainties happens are by far the most fortunate, for the attempt to turn a column of lorries on a narrow road, especially if it consists, as it usually does, of a central strip of pavé bordered by fathomless mud, is certain to be fraught with disaster. A fully-loaded ammunition lorry stuck in a ditch is a most heartbreaking sight, particularly (if the bull may be forgiven) if the night is so dark that one cannot see it. It must be unloaded, dragged