But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of “proceedings,” and his departure was the signal for a general dispersion.  “Come and have a drink,” said Ponsonby to the “I” man.  “Can’t, you slacker,” was the reply.  “I’ve got to go and make up an ‘I’ summary.  ’Notes of an Air Reconnaissance.  Distribution of the enemy’s forces.  Copy of a German Divisional Circular.  Notes on the German system of signalling from their trenches.’  You know the usual kind of thing.  Just now we’re trying to discover how many guns they’ve got in the batteries of their new formations.  We’ve noticed that their 77-mm. projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns have been withdrawn.  But it may be only a blind.”

As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our respective offices a supply column rumbled over the pave, each of the seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a fleet.  Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the aeroplane going home to roost.  The thunder of guns was clearly audible from the north-east.  The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, “It’s Hill 60 again.  My old regiment’s up there.  And to-morrow the casualty returns will come in.  Good God! will it never end?”

XXVI

FIAT JUSTITIA

PARQUET
du
Tribunal de Iere Instance
d’Ypres

At last I had found it.  I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking out the procureur du roi, and I had sought in vain.  He was nowhere to be found.  Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed among the ruins.  The German guns had been threshing the ancient city like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes strange, uncouth, and lamentable.  The Cloth Hall was little more than a deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a spectacle at once tragic and whimsical—­the brass lectern still stood upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as with a gesture of reproof.  The sight of those scrambling chairs all huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts.  Ypres is an uncanny place.

We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops, pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until all the virtue of the dye had run out of them.  Before resuming our hunt for the procureur du roi—­who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to Poperinghe—­we entered a restaurant for lunch.  It was crowded with French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely boy, who regarded A——­,