knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the
great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their
hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the
heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields
which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry,
and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This
was the secret of their heavy lethargy.

My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to
maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul
had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it,
the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of
the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a
time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the
refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom
has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by
parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would
supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we
directed them to go.

But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still
standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man
gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary
humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their
inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.

XXI

A "DUG-OUT"[24]

Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying
one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he
felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that
morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy
should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He
performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive
great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical
expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a
sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a
utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering
the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism,
and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not
been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would
have obse