p. It was
a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the
Moorish spire of the Hotel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against
the starlit sky.

We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in
the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs
on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Bassee.

For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed
before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with
delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has
never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we
were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or
not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after
passing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.

After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the
mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and
gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky
Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was
probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he
always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad--probably due
to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.

Passing through Merville, A----, who was marching beside me, regained
his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold
champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.

A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the
major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road
through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different
directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.

We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation--good airy
barns, a mill-pond for washing, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary
water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the
largest and best farm a sign:--

"SMALL POX.
BY ORDER."

Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we
hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found
the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated
peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.

Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet
of paper she called a "reclamation,"