mend them (or otherwise) to
me for passes--a most trying duty, wearing to the temper; but he was
angelic in patience, and, as a light recreation, used to accompany me
to the trenches fairly often.

One case there was where, for three nights running, great fids of wire
were cut out of some artillery cables connecting them with their
observers--a most reprehensible deed. So I had patrols out to spy
along the lines,--no result, except that next morning another 100
yards had gone. So I made St Andre publish a blood-and-thunder
proclamation threatening death to any one found tampering with our
wires. Spies were plentiful, and a gap in our wires might be fatal.

And then the culprit owned up. It was an old woman near whose cottage
the wires passed, and her fences required mending.

Neuve Eglise, which we inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we
spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first
three days, when we lived with a doctor,--and his stove smoked
frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,--we dwelt
in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house,
about the biggest in the village--which was three times the size of
Dranoutre,--with real furniture in it, a real dining-room (horribly
cold, as the stove refused to work), and a most comfortable series of
highly civilized bedrooms. (Last time I was in the neighbourhood--August
1915--there was long grass in the streets, not a soul in the place,
half the houses in absolute ruins, and our late quarters with one side
missing and three parts of the house as well.) The trenches were much
less pestered with shells and bullets than the Dranoutre lot, and it
was easier work altogether for the men. We quite enjoyed it, and on
Xmas Day so did the Germans. For they came out of their trenches and
walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks.
What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let
them come? You could not let them come into your trenches; so the only
thing feasible at the moment was done--and some of our men met them
halfway and began talking to them.

We got into trouble for doing it. But, after all, it is difficult to
see what we could otherwise have done, unless we shot the very first
unarmed man who showed himself--_pour encourager les autres_; but we
did not know what he was going to do. Meanwhile our officers got
excellent close views of the German trenches, and