I got a tip from him as to my friend’s new dwelling-place.  “I say, Sentry, which house does Mr. Hudson live in?” “That small ’un down t’other end on the left, sir.”  “Thanks.”  I went back along the deserted ruin of a street, and at the far end on the left I saw the dim outline of a small cottage, almost intact it appeared, standing about five yards back from the road.  This was the place the sentry meant right enough, and in I went at the hole in the plaster wall.  The front door having apparently stopped something or other previously, was conspicuous by its absence.

All was dark.  I groped my way along round to the back, stumbling over various bits of debris on the ground, until I found the opening into what must be the room where Hudson had elected to live.  Not a light showed anywhere, which was as it should be, for a light would be easily seen by the Boches not far away, and if they did see one there would be trouble.

[Illustration:  “Someone’s been at this blinkin Strawberry”]

I came to an opening covered with an old sack.  Pulling this a little to one side I was greeted with a volume of suffocating smoke.  I proceeded further, and diving in under the sack, got inside the room.  In the midst of the smoke, sitting beside a crushed and battered fire-bucket, sat a man, his face illuminated by the flickering light from the fire.  The rest of the room was bathed in mysterious darkness.  “Where’s Mr. Hudson?” I asked.  “He’s out havin’ a look at the barbed wire in front of the village, I think, sir; but he’ll be back soon, as this is where ’e stays now.”  I determined to wait, and, to fill in the time, started to examine the cottage.

It was the first house I had been into in the firing line, and, unsavoury wreck of a place as it was, it gave one a delightful feeling of comfort to sit on the stone-flagged floor and look upon four perforated walls and a shattered roof.  The worst possible house in the world would be an improvement on any of those dug-outs we had in the trenches.  The front room had been blown away, leaving a back room and a couple of lean-tos which opened out from it.  An attic under the thatched roof with all one end knocked out completed the outfit.  The outer and inner walls were all made of that stuff known as wattle and daub—­sort of earth-like plaster worked into and around hurdles.  A bullet would, of course, go through walls of this sort like butter, and so they had.  For, on examining the outer wall on the side which faced the Germans, I found it looking like the top of a pepper-pot for holes.

A sound as of a man trying to waltz with a cream separator, suggested to my mind that someone had tripped and fallen over that mysterious obstacle outside, which I had noticed on entering, and presently I heard Hudson’s voice cursing through the sack doorway.

He came in and saw me examining the place.  “Hullo, you’re here too, are you?” he exclaimed.  “Are you going to stay here as well?”