We left the group by the cottage waiting for the reply about the nature of the wounded man's injuries. Not a head showed from the trench where he was lying. The trench itself, though only twenty yards or so away, was hardly visible in the field. Glad it was not our turn to lie like logs in it all the day, we went on down the village street. Nearly all the cottages were empty, but in one we came on a group of inhabitants who had remained. They had all collected in a kitchen and were having a last meal round their table. They had got a little bread and some coffee, which they were sharing with three private soldiers, who in exchange had contributed a tin of bully beef. It made a strange sight to see the weeping, frightened women and the tired dusty soldiers who had come to defend them. The women had given the men a place round the fire, and were waiting on them attentively. The privates could speak no French and the peasants no English, so conversation was impossible, but an interchange of thought could be read in the eyes of both parties; the women looking on the men sadly and devoutedly, realizing they had come there perhaps to give their lives for them, and across the men's faces would come a look of appreciation for the hot comforting coffee, and at other times a look of inscrutable purposefulness, which is hard to describe, but which all our men wear in France, and which is symbolic of the spirit which is carrying them through the campaign. Seeing officers outside, one of the women came out. I said "good-morning" to her in French, and with a delighted "_Ah, Monsieur, vous parlez Français_," she addressed herself to me excitedly. It appeared that her husband had been missing since the day before. She was very anxious about him. Two officers had come to the cottage, asked him some questions, and then taken him away with them. She had not seen the man since. What did I think could have become of him? I asked her some questions about the officers who had taken her husband away, and from her description gathered that they were a captain and subaltern in the British Army. As the Westshire Regiment was the only regiment that I knew had been in the village since the Germans left it, I felt sure the officers the woman referred to must be from that regiment. Accordingly I went back to ask the adjutant of the Westshires if he could give any information on the subject. He told me that when the regiment had got up to the village the day before they had searched the cottages and found a man in one of the upper rooms behaving suspiciously with a lamp by a window which looked on the German lines. They had taken the man off with them and sent him back to the rear, where he would probably be tried for his life for a spy. This put me in an awkward position, as I did not know what to tell the poor woman, who, whatever her husband had done, was herself innocent of any evil intentions. I contended myself with telling her that her husband was