t sprung up as I came in be the door.

"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and
he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves
and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked (p. 079)
him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye
have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a
Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with nothin' bar
the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye know, I had a
kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in to my house
without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as if he was in
his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said, 'This is only
a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for ye, so come
along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to our trenches
as stand-to was coming to an end."

Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where
the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the
grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives
one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with
daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of
colour--crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some
weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080)
lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught
in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows
across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and
perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and
decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of
the tragedy between the trenches.

There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
cons