valise, and crawled into it, my head jammed against the door, and my feet up the stove pipe, like Alice in the house of the White Rabbit. He slept with his feet out of the window, until early one morning a passing horse, of inquisitive temperament, seeing the blanket, gave it a sharp tug. My friend woke up convinced the Huns were upon us. My most comfortable nights were spent in a coal cellar, which two of us had cleared out and adapted to our uses. My stable companion, being something of a sybarite, looted an iron bedstead on which to spread his valise--it was a new and improved type, and when extended in all its glory had a curious canopy of its own, the effect of the whole being like nothing so much as Noah's Ark. Into this, with much difficulty and objurgation he would crawl, when the mysterious concern would promptly convert itself into a portable washingstand or some other fitment of extreme utility, whence it had to be coaxed into the Ark-like form again. I, less ambitious, supported a shutter on some bricks, and laid my very ordinary valise on that. It was far less ostentatious, and I had fewer adventurous nights. It was cold in that cellar, so we raided a stove that we lit every evening, finding plenty of broken rafters in the ruined houses round us to serve for fuel. We shall neither of us know again such nights as those, lulled to sleep as we were by the sleepless batteries around us, although in profound peace we might rest in the most sumptuous bed that Tottenham Court Road ever produced. In this ideal spot we had a bathroom with a huge stove in it, on which to boil many gallons of water in petrol cans, and no luxury could equal the luxury of those hot baths. There was a tragedy connected with it, though. One young officer was wallowing in a glorious sea of foaming lather, when a shell burst a few yards from the door. Not being sure where and when to expect the next, he dashed as he was through the battery to his dug-out, the soap-suds flying from him as foam from the limbs of some swift-footed sea-god. Nor was the major more fortunate. Condemned to spend many weary days and nights in his O.P., and missing the bathroom, he constructed one on the same plan, but less the stove, in the house he used for the purpose. But unfortunately there was only a wooden partition between him and the enemy, and one day stray bullets began to come through this with alarming frequency. He, too, was compelled to beat a hurried retreat.