This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn.  It’s quite an unusually charming bit of the country.

August 11.

[Sidenote:  DOMART]

Jezebel did such an astonishing thing yesterday.  I was out with the signallers practising.  We didn’t want the bother of holding or picketing the horses.  So I ordered “off-saddle,” and then put a guard over the disused quarry where I had decided to leave them.  The quarry had a grassy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7 foot high.  Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined to leave her with the other horses.  They were stripped of all bridles and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.

Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.

Presently shouts from the guard.  I went back to see what was the matter. 
My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!

She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had slipped back.  When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had happened.  Ah, but wait.  This is not all.

Later on in the morning another hooroosh.  A loud squealing and sounds of kicking.  One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly.  That well-known voice.  I should recognize her squeal anywhere.  As I was going towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished.  “What the devil....”  And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill like mad!  It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and shouted with laughter.

My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose horse.

Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight into a corps H.Q. village.  This village is crawling with Generals!

Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck, for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else, seems to have got wind of the incident.  Subalterns, yes, and I am sumptuously ragged about it.  But how all the Generals and things happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don’t know.  And still this is not the cream of the comedy.

After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry with Corporal Dutton.  My dear, There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a cucumber!

She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.

[Sidenote:  ANOTHER MOVE NORTHWARDS]

The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion.  The other horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose, something—­a fly, perhaps—­had frightened them, and off they had galloped.  While “the accursed female,” as we sometimes call Jezebel, too sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding.  I shall never be taken in by her air of innocence again.  Never.  I don’t a bit mind saying I was decidedly alarmed.  That mare might have been responsible for the death of the Corps Commander.