us to sleep. It was delightful. Each of us had a
snowy white bed with white curtains in a long corridor, and there was a
basin of water, cold but clean, and a towel for each of us. We
thoroughly enjoyed our luxuries.

_28 October._--The tide of battle seems to have swung away from us again
and we were recalled to Furnes to-day. The hospital looked very bare and
empty as all the patients had been evacuated, and there was nothing to
do till fresh ones should come in. Three shells came over to-day and
landed in a field near us. Some people say they were sent by our own
naval guns firing wide. The souvenir grafters went out and got pieces of
them.

[Page Heading: DUNKIRK]

_2 November._--I have been spending a couple of nights in Dunkirk, where
I went to meet Miss Fyfe. The _Invicta_ got in late because the _Hermes_
had been torpedoed and they had gone to her assistance. No doubt the
torpedo was intended for the _Invicta_, which carries ammunition, and is
becoming an unpopular boat in consequence. Forty of the _Hermes_ men
were lost.

Dunkirk is full of people, and one meets friends at every turn. I had
tea at the Consulate one afternoon, and was rather glad to get away from
the talk of shells and wounds, which is what one hears most of at
Furnes.

I saw Lord Kitchener in the town one day; he had come to confer with
Joffre, Sir John French, Monsieur Poincare, and Mr. Churchill, at a
meeting held at the Chapeau Rouge Hotel. Rather too many valuable men in
one room, I thought--especially with so many spies about! Three men in
English officers' uniforms were found to be Germans the other day and
taken out and shot.

The Duchess of Sutherland has a hospital at our old Casino at Malo les
Bains, and has made it very nice. I had a long chat with a Coldstream
man who was there. He told me he was carried to a barn after being shot
in the leg and the bone shattered. He lay there for six days before he
was found, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. He dressed his own
wound.

"But," he said, "the string of my puttee had been driven in so far by
the shot I couldn't find it to get the thing off, so I had to bandage
over it."

I went down to the station one day to see if anything could be done for
the wounded there. They are coming in at the rate of seven hundred a
day, and are laid on straw in an immense goods-shed. They get nothing to
eat, and the atmosphere is so bad that their wounds can't be dressed.
They are all pat