wing trees. Birds were singing gaily; May blossom was
blooming everywhere; the green of the trees was wonderful to behold.
Presently they came to a great clearing in a pine forest. The life of
the country seemed suddenly to end, and they arrived at a newly
improvised town. There were simply miles of wooden huts, while the
sound of men's voices, the neighing of horses, and the rolling of
wheels were heard on every hand. These huts, from what Tom could see,
were nearly all of them about two hundred feet long, while around them
were great open spaces where all vegetation had been worn away by the
tramp of thousands of feet. The men, who had been singing all the way
during their march, became silent; the scene was so utterly different
from what they had left. That morning they had left a grim, grey,
smoky manufacturing town; in the evening they had entered a clearing
surrounded by sylvan beauty.

"I feel as though I could stay here for ever," said Tom. "But look at
yon'," and he pointed to a long, low hut, at the door of which the
letters "Y.M.C.A." were painted. "Why, they're here too!"

"Yes," said Penrose, "there's not a camp in the country where you don't
find the Y.M.C.A. huts; for that matter they are on the Continent too."

"But yon' place must have cost a lot of money," said Tom, "you can't
build shanties like that without a lot of brass. Where did they get
the brass from?"

"I expect the people who believe in religious lolly-pops gave it to
them," replied Penrose.

It took Tom two or three days before he became accustomed to his new
surroundings. He found that in this camp nearly thirty thousand men
had gathered; men who had come from every corner of the
country--Cameronians, Durhams, Devons, Welsh, Duke of Cornwalls, they
were all here. Tom had rather expected that the advent of a new
battalion would have caused some excitement, but scarcely any notice
seemed to be taken; their coming was a matter of course. Three days
before a battalion had left for the Front, and they had come to take
their place, that was all. Instead of being billeted at various
houses, as they had been in Lancashire, they had now to sleep sixty in
a hut. Tom laughed as he saw the sleeping arrangements. Beds were
placed close together all around the building; these beds were of the
most primitive nature, and consisted of a sack of straw, a couple of
rugs, and what might be called a pillow. These sacks of straw were
raised