es on the "frozen porridge." I then tried to make up a mixture.
It occurred to me that possibly soot might be made into a sort of ink,
and used with a paint brush. I tried this, but drew a blank again. I was
bordering on despair, when my servant said he thought he had put a
bottle of Indian ink in my pack when we left to come into the trenches
this time. He had a look, and found that his conjecture was right; he
had got a bottle of Indian ink and a few brushes, as he thought I might
want to draw something, so had equipped the pack accordingly.

I now started my fresco act on the walls of the Douve farm.

I spent most of the day on the job, and discovered how some startling
effects could be produced.

Materials were: A bottle of Indian ink, a couple of brushes, about a
hundredweight of useless charcoal, and a G.S. blue and red pencil.

Amongst the rough sketches that I did that day were the original
drawings for two subsequent "Fragments" of mine.

One was the rough idea for "They've evidently seen me," and the other
was "My dream for years to come." The idea for "They've evidently seen
me" came whilst carrying back that table to St. Yvon, as I mentioned in
a previous chapter, but the scenario for the idea was not provided for
until I went to this farm some time later. In intervals of working at
the walls I rambled about the farm building, and went up into a loft
over a barn at the end of the farm nearest the trenches. I looked out
through a hole in the tiles just in time to hear a shell come over from
away back amongst the Germans somewhere, and land about five hundred
yards to the left. The sentence, "They've evidently seen me," came
flashing across my mind again, and I now saw the correct setting in my
mind: _i.e._, the enthusiastic observer looking out of the top of a
narrow chimney, whilst a remarkably well-aimed shell leads "him of the
binoculars" to suppose that they _have_ seen him.

I came downstairs and made a pencil sketch of my idea, and before I left
the trenches that time I had done a wash drawing and sent it to England.
This was my second "Fragment."

The other sketch, "My dream for years to come," was drawn on one wall
of a small apple or potato room, opening off our big room, and the
drawing occupied the whole wall.

[Illustration: porters]

I knocked off drawing about four o'clock, and did a little of the
alternative occupation, that of looking out through the cracked windows
on to the mutilat