had reached the village two hours before, and were finishing their
evening meal. They offered me dinner, which I refused, and then a
whisky, which I accepted; but there were no spare rooms. They had got
away from the neighbourhood of the canal with the loss of two hows.,
but told me of a 9.2 battery at ----, that it had been absolutely
impossible to get out. "I believe it is true that we've done very well
up north," replied their Irish captain cheerfully. "Lots of prisoners
at Ypres, they say.... Have another whisky!"

"We have one tent, haven't we?" I asked the sergeant-major when I got
outside.

"Yes, sir, but there's a cottage where Meddings has put the officers'
cook-house. It looks all right, and there might be something there for
the colonel."

The cottage certainly looked clean and neat from the outside, but the
door was locked, and it is the rule that British troops only enter
French houses with the consent of the owners. However, I climbed
through the window and found two empty rooms each with bed and
mattress. Times were not for picking and choosing. "We'll put the tent
up," I decided, "and ask the colonel if he cares to take one of these
beds or have the tent. You and I, Bushman, will take what he doesn't
want."

When I took a turn round to see if the men were comfortably settled for
the night, I learnt that the skurried departure of the A.S.C. had
provided them with unexampled opportunity of legitimate loot. There was
one outbuilding crammed with blankets, shirts, socks, and
underwear--and our men certainly rose to the occasion. Even the old
wheeler chuckled when he discovered a brand-new saw and a drill. The
sergeant-major fastened on to a gramophone; and that caused me for the
first time to remember my Columbia graphophone that I had loaned to C
Battery before I went home wounded from Zillebeke. Hang it, it must
have been left behind at Villequier Aumont. The Germans had probably
got it by now.

It was half-past twelve before the colonel returned. "I'll have my
camp-bed put up there," he said promptly, indicating an airy cart-shed,
and he refused altogether to look at the empty cottage. So Bushman and
I had beds made up in the tent, and then the three of us sat down to a
welcome and memorable _al fresco_ supper opposite our horse lines. Our
table was a door balanced on a tree stump, and Meddings provided a
wonderful Lincolnshire pork-pie. He also managed hot potatoes as an
extra surprise, and as it