Strange, too, are the messes that two or three officers, alone together on detachment, establish for their own convenience. I know of one in the dark low hall of an old farmhouse, that is in itself mess-room, kitchen and sleeping apartment for the servants of the two officers who lived in the little room opening off it. Life there was very much as we imagine it in mediæval times, the officers had their meals with their servants standing behind their chairs--not from a desire for wanton display, but because there was nowhere else to go--by the light of two candles and the red glow of the stove in the background. Upon the oaken beams of the ceiling hung strange shapes that were the implements of war, looted German rifles and bayonets, haversacks, water-bottles, binoculars, sextants and other lethal weapons. A dripping oilskin dried by the fire, the faint smell of warm wet gum-boots mingled with that of the boiling cabbage. Perhaps the telephone that buzzed incessantly introduced a modern element, but everything else, seen in the gloom of the shaded candles, looked ghostly, unreal, a scene from some forgotten haunt of a robber baron. And the rats ran fearlessly across the floor, or sat very still in the corners, their fierce eyes shining as the light caught them. Tea was the meal of the day in that mess, for then one of the two came in from his observation post at Suicide Corner, for which he had set out at half-past five in the morning, tired and hungry, and tea when the light has failed and the rising mist of late autumn foretells a white frost is a worthy meal. Suicide Corner was a bleak spot, too, and eight hours in such a place with nothing but bully-beef sandwiches for lunch gives one an amazing appetite. And if one's companion is Scotch with an apparently limitless acquaintance who send him shortbread and oat-cake, then one's cup of delight is full indeed. Suicide Corner is not the name of that cross-roads where the observation post stands, but, as it stands there still, or part of it does at all events, its real name is best left unsaid. A feeble imitator of the immortal "Ruthless Rhymes" in his intervals of observation produced the following-- To a cross-roads that I know Careful Colonels rarely go. 'Tis a pity; if the sniper Potted men whose years were riper, Our artillery promotion Would be quicker, I've a notion!