rchway into a
cobble-paved courtyard, where on the left, under the roof of a shed,
the saddles of cavalry horses and gendarmes were waiting on saddle
trestles. Beyond, through a glazed door, was a long dining room, with
a bare, white-scrubbed floor and whitewashed walls. Its white
table-cloths, white walls and ceiling and white floor, with no hint of
fire, although a fine snow had commenced to fall, set me to shivering.
Even the attempt at decoration of hanging baskets, of trailing vines
with strings of red peppers, was hardly cheering.

From the window a steep, walled garden fell away, dreary enough under
the grey sky and the snowfall. The same curious pale-green moss
covered the trees, and beyond the garden wall, in a field, was a hole
where a German aeroplane had dropped a bomb.

Hot coffee had been ordered, and we went into a smaller room for it.
Here there was a fire, with four French soldiers gathered round it.
One of them was writing at the table. The others were having their
palms read.

"You have a heart line," said the palmist to one of them--"a heart
line like a windmill!"

I drank my coffee and listened. I could understand only a part of it,
but it was eminently cheerful. They laughed, chaffed each other, and
although my presence in the hotel must have caused much curiosity in
that land of no women, they did not stare at me. Indeed, it was I who
did the gazing.

After a time I was given a room. It was at the end of a whitewashed
corridor, from which pine doors opened on either side into bedrooms.
The corridor was bare of carpet, the whole upstairs freezing cold.
There were none of the amenities. My room was at the end. It boasted
two small windows, with a tiny stand between them containing a tin
basin and a pitcher; a bed with one side of the mattress torn open and
exposing a heterogeneous content that did not bear inspection; a pine
chair, a candle and a stove.

They called it a stove. It had a coal receptacle that was not as large
as a porridge bowl, and one small lump of coal, pulverized, was all it
held. It was lighted with a handful of straw. Turn your back and count
ten, and it was out. Across the foot of the bed was one of the
Continental feather comforts which cover only one's feet and let the
rest freeze.

It was not so near the front as La Panne, but the windows rattled
incessantly from the bombardment of Ypres. I glanced through one of
the windows. The red tiles I had grown to know so we