e three of us.
We had been looking over toward the German lines. Suddenly I looked
down into the street below. Some one with an electric flash was
signalling across. It was quite distinct. All of us saw it. There was
an answer from the German trenches immediately. While one of us kept
watch on the tower the others rushed down into the street. There was
no one there. But it is certain that that sort of thing goes on all
the time."

A quarter to eleven!

Suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible--that the noise at the foot
of the street was really guns; that I should be there; that these two
young women should live there day and night in the midst of such
horrors. For the whole town is a graveyard. Bodies in numbers have
been buried in shell-holes and hastily covered, or float in the
stagnant water of the canal. Every heavy rain uncovers shallow graves
in the fields, allowing a dead arm, part of a rotting trunk, to show.

And now, after this lapse of time, it still seems incredible. Are they
still there? Report has it that the Germans captured this town and
held it for a time, only to lose it later. What happened to the little
"sick and sorry" house during those fearful days? Did the German
officers sit about that pine table and throw a nut to summon an
orderly? Did they fill the lamp while it was lighted, and play on the
cracked piano, and pick up shrapnel cases as they landed on the
doorstep and set them on the mantel?

Ten minutes to eleven!

The chauffeur came to the door and stuck his head in.

"I have found petrol in a can in an empty shed," he explained. "It is
now possible to go."

We went. We lost no time on the order of our going. The rain was over,
but the fog had descended again. We lighted our lamps, and were curtly
ordered by a sentry to put them out. In the moment that they remained
alight, carefully turned away from the trenches, it was possible to
see the hopeless condition of the street.

At last we reached a compromise. One lamp we might have, but covered
with heavy paper. It was very little. The car bumped ominously, sagged
into shell-holes.

I turned and looked back at the house. Faint rays of light shone
through its boarded windows. A wounded soldier had been brought up the
street and stood, leaning heavily on his companion, at the doorstep.
The door opened, and he was taken in.

Good-bye, little "sick and sorry" house, with your laughter and tears,
your friendly hands, your open door!