It was twilight.  Here and there a candle gleamed, for any bright illumination was considered unwise.

What must they think as they lie there during the long dark hours between twilight and the late winter morning?  Like the sentry, many of them must wonder if it is worth while.  These are people, most of them, who have lived by their labour.  What will they do when the war is over, or when, having made such recovery as they may, the hospital opens its doors and must perforce turn them out on the very threshold of war?

And yet they cling to life.  I met a man who crossed the Channel—­I believe it was from Flushing—­with the first lot of hopelessly wounded English prisoners who had been sent home to England from Germany in exchange for as many wrecked and battered Germans on their way back to the Fatherland.

One young boy was all eagerness.  His home was on the cliff above the harbour which was their destination.  He alternately wept and cheered.

“They’ll be glad enough to see me, all right,” he said.  “It’s six months since they heard from me.  More than likely they think I’m lying over there with some of the other chaps.”

He was in a wheeled chair.  In his excitement the steamer rug slipped down.  Both his legs were gone above the knees!

Our hands were full.  The General had picked up a horseshoe on the street at Ypres and given it to me to bring me luck; the Commandant had the framed pictures.  The General carried the gargoyle wrapped in a newspaper.  I had the nose of the shell.

We walked through the courtyard, with its broken fountain and cracked walks, out to the machine.  The password for the night was “Ecosse,” which means “Scotland.”  The General gave the word to the orderly and we went on again toward Poperinghe, where we were to have coffee.

The firing behind us had ceased.  Possibly the German gunners were having coffee also.  We went at our usual headlong speed through almost empty roads.  Now and then a lantern waved.  We checked our headlong speed to give the password, and on again.  More lanterns; more challenges.

Since we passed, a few hours before, another car had been wrecked by the road.  One sees these cars everywhere, lying on their sides, turned turtle in ditches, bent and twisted against trees.  No one seems to be hurt in these accidents; at least one hears nothing of them, if they are.  And now we were back at Poperinghe again.

The Commandant had his headquarters in the house of a notary.  Except in one instance, all the houses occupied by the headquarters’ staffs that I visited were the houses of notaries.  Perhaps the notary is the important man of a French town.  I do not know.

This was a double house with a centre hall, a house of some pretension in many ways.  But it had only one lamp.  When we went from one room to another we took the lamp with us.  It was not even a handsome lamp.  In that very comfortable house it was one of the many anomalies of war.