_verglas_ and here and there, where a siege shell had fallen, there was
an embarrassing hole, not easily to be distinguished in the night-time
from the merest puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the whole
village, and it is not at all a thing to be surprised at that our
jackdaw lost his way and had a stumble or two into the icy pools which
beset him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in which he lived,
or rather, he found the site of it, for an 18 centimetre shell had burst
there in his absence and the hut was not. We were making our apology for
breakfast in the dusk before dawn when he returned to us. He was clothed
in a thin armour of ice from head to foot and it trickled from him in
little showers as he stood forlornly before us. The hardest heart must
needs have pitied him, but it was he himself who gave the pathos of the
show away. "Has nobody got a cup of tea?" he asked. "Tea," cried Bond
Moore, who had a special mis-liking for him, "tea, you------" (the blank
may be filled in according to fancy, on the understanding that it was
neither polite nor complimentary) "there's no tea within five hundred
miles." "Oh!" said the unhappy man, "I wish I had never come on this
campaign, I do so miss my little comforts!" There was nobody there, I
am sure, who would have been much shocked if, in the circumstances, our
jackdaw had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his condition
may say almost anything and may expect to be forgiven, but at this most
inadequate bleat we yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stood
staring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a full three minutes
before we could rouse ourselves to attend to his necessities.

When I first went out to Turkey I was very much under the domination of
Mr Gladstone's opinion. I was quite full of the unspeakable Turk and
his wickednesses and was quite as anxious as the great Liberal statesman
himself to see the "sick man" bundled out of Europe bag and baggage. But
when I began to move about the country and to meet, as I was forced
to do, men of all sorts and conditions among its native population,
my sentiments with respect to the Turk underwent a thorough and rapid
change. The real people, the men of the commercial and artisan classes
and the rank and file of the army, are amongst the best people I have
ever known. Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a race they
are brave, truthful and kindly, and I never met one authentic insta