hot from under me, sir.' Suddenly the
shelling ceased, and they emerged from their shelter. The mule's
master was the first outside. He fully expected to see but a
blood-stain on the spot where he had left the beast, but to his great
surprise and satisfaction he saw the mule serenely nibbling at the
grass growing alongside the building. The old 'donk' had not sustained
an injury. To say that he was proud to lead a whole mule back to his
quarters instead of having to carry only its head, is an altogether
inadequate way of describing his actual feelings.

[Illustration: 'Did you hear that one, Bill?']

'Did you hear that one, Bill?' asked one man of another who had come
along the shell-swept road rather hurriedly.

'Yes,' replied the nearly exhausted man, 'I heard it twice; once when
it passed me, and again when I passed it.'

MESSINES

JUNE 7, 1917

A shell-struck souvenir of hellish war,
A monument of man's stupendous hate!
Can this have been a Paradise before,
Now up-blown, blasted, drear and desolate?
Aye, once with smiling and contented face
She reigned a queen above a charming place.

But soon the sport of leaders and of kings
Transformed her to a resting-place for guns,
Rude scars across her breasts the worker flings,
To shelter countless hordes of hell-born Huns,
The while, upon the next opposing crest,
Our men died gamely as they did their best.

And thus for years, with cold, relentless zeal,
With fiendish science both sides fought and watched,
From loop-holes or from clouds which half conceal,
Or in deep tunnels all their skill was matched.
On sentry in the firebay, or the hov'ring 'plane,
Mining and countermining yet again.

And far behind such scenes, great engineers
Pondered o'er problems without parallel.
And planned with wisdom of a thousand years,
To blow the other to eternal Hell.
Their calculations left no callous scheme untried,
To slaughter hundreds of the other side.

But hush! the whole machinery's complete,
All plans are folded and the great work's done,
The work of building up to cause defeat--
The lever's pulled, and, lo! a new work has begun.
The task of falling on a shattered foe,
And doing things undreamed-of years ago.

Hush! hark! A mighty rumbling roar breaks thro',
And see! Her crest-line leaps into a flame,
T