Whizz!  Boom!  Bang!  Crash!  Wump!

“It’s just as well,” mused the Brigade Major, turning in his sleep about three o’clock the following morning, “that they warned us about the deceptive sound of the shelling here.  One would almost imagine that it was quite close....  That last one was heavy stuff:  it shook the whole place!...  This is a topping mattress:  it would be rotten having to take to the woods again after getting into really cooshie quarters at last....  There they go again!” as a renewed tempest of shells rent the silence of night.  “That old battery must be getting it in the neck!...  Hallo, I could have sworn something hit the roof that time!  A loose slate, I expect!  Anyhow ...”

The Brigade Major, who had had a very long day, turned over and went to sleep again.

IV

The next morning, a Sunday, broke bright and clear.  Contrary to his usual habit, the Brigade Major took a stroll in the garden before breakfast.  The first object which caught his eye, as he came down the back-door steps, was the figure of the Staff Captain, brooding pensively over a large crater, close to the hedge.  The Brigade Major joined him.

“I wonder if that was there yesterday!” he observed, referring to the crater.

“Couldn’t have been,” growled the Staff Captain.  “We walked to the house along this very hedge.  No craters then!”

“True!” agreed the Brigade Major amiably.  He turned and surveyed the garden.  “That lawn looks a bit of a golf course.  What lovely bunkers!”

“They appear to be quite new, too,” remarked the Staff Captain thoughtfully.  “Come to breakfast!”

On their way back they found the Brigadier, the Machine-Gun Officer, and the Padre, gazing silently upward.

“I wonder when that corner of the house got knocked off,” the M.G.O. was observing.

“Fairly recently, I should say,” replied the Brigadier.

“Those marks beside your bedroom window, sir,—­they look pretty fresh!” interpolated the Padre, a sincere but somewhat tactless Christian.

Brigade Headquarters regarded one another with dubious smiles.

“I wonder,” began a tentative voice, “if those fellows last night were indulging in a leg-pull—­what is called in this country a lire-jambe—­when they assured us—­”

WHOO-OO-OO-OO-UMP!

A shell came shrieking over the tree-tops, and fell with a tremendous splash into the geometrical centre of the lake, fifty yards away.

* * * * *

For the next two hours, shrapnel, “whizz-bangs,” “Silent Susies,” and other explosive wildfowl raged round the walls of Hush Hall.  The inhabitants thereof, some twenty persons in all, were gathered in various apartments on the lee side.

“It is still possible,” remarked the Brigadier, lighting his pipe, “that they are not aiming at us.  However, it is just as inconvenient to be buried by accident as by design.  As soon as the first direct hit is registered upon this imposing fabric, we will retire to the dug-outs.  Send word to the kitchen that every one is to be ready to clear out of the house when necessary.”