e garden flourished
and the vegetables drew near to the day when they would be fit for
consumption.

Mary gloated over that garden; he went to a world of trouble with it,
he bent over it and weeded it for hours on end; he watered it
religiously every night, he even erected miniature forcing frames over
some of the vegetable rows, ransacking the remains of the broken-down
hamlet for squares of glass or for any pieces large enough for his
purpose. He built these cunningly with frameworks of wood and untwisted
strands of barbed wire, and there is no doubt they helped the growth of
his garden immensely.

Although they have not been torched upon, it must not be supposed that
Mary had no other duties. Despite our frequently announced "Supremacy
of the Air," the anti-aircraft guns were in action rather frequently.
The German aeroplanes in this part of the line appeared to ignore the
repeated assurances in our Press that the German 'plane invariably
makes off on the appearance of a British one; and although it is true
that in almost every case the German was "turned back," he very
frequently postponed the turning until he had sailed up and down the
line a few times and seen, it may be supposed, all that there was to
see.

At such times--and they happened as a rule at least once a day and
occasionally two, three, or four times a day--Mary had to run from his
gardening and help man the guns.

In the course of a month the section shot away many thousands of
shells, and, it is to be hoped, severely frightened many German pilots,
although at that time they could only claim to have brought down one
'plane, and that in a descent so far behind the German lines that its
fate was uncertain.

It must be admitted that the gunners on the whole made excellent
shooting, and if they did not destroy their target, or even make him
turn back, they fulfilled the almost equally useful object of making
him keep so high that he could do little useful observing. But the
short periods of time spent by the section in shooting were no more
than enough to add a pleasant flavor of sport to life, and on the
whole, since the weather was good and the German gunnery was not--or at
least not good enough to be troublesome to the section--life during
that month moved very pleasantly.

But at last there came a day when it looked as if some of the
inconveniences of war were due to arrive. The German aeroplane appeared
as usual one morning just after the se