be anything like Mons, and to my amazement he stopped his moaning all at once and said with a twinkle in his eye, “Let’s beat it to the dugout; the doc won’t see us.”  We took the chance and started.  On the way Fritz shot up the road and with a spring like an india-rubber man, Scotty jumped behind a tree.  We finally reached our destination and Scotty proceeded to get something to eat.  He lit a fire while I brought the water.  The cookhouse here was in the house of a farmer who had vacated, and as the smoke coming from the chimney got thicker every moment, I was apprehensive lest Fritz would see it and send over a shell message, but Scotty pooh-poohed the idea.

Dinner was almost ready when—­Kr-kr-kr-p!  Kr-kr-kr-p!  Bang! and a shell shot clean through the joint.  The concussion threw me to the floor, covering me with lime and plaster-of-paris from the walls and ceiling.  I got up and looked around for the cook.  The hero of Mons had been knocked down, with the stove on top of him, and he was lying in the corner praying like a good fellow.  “Oh, Lord! look down in pity and save me!  Thou knowest, Lord, I am unworthy o’ thy mercy, but please control the shells o’ those barbarians and send them in anither direction, and Thine shall be a’ the glory.”  Then he saw me standing there and he yelled, “Do you think there’ll be any more?” “No, that was merely a stray shell.  Let’s get this grub, I’m starving.”  “Stray shell be damned,” said he, “they’ve seen the smoke and they’ll be putting more over.”

No sooner said than Kr-kr-kr-p!  Kr-kr-kr-p!  Kr-kr-kr-p! and three or four more shells banged about the place, one of them blowing the pump from outside through the shack past Scotty, out through the other wall, and Scotty, ducking and dodging like a man trying to buck the line in a football game, shot through the door and vanished in the night.

The pan of bacon he had been cooking was still intact except that it had a coating of plaster-of-paris from the walls and ceiling of the room, and I proceeded to put it under my belt as fast as my jaws would work, and then made for my dugout.  I was just settling down to a quiet smoke when I heard the Major calling for Scotty at the top of his voice.  Getting no response, he called for me and I hastened to his quarters.

“Grant, go down and see if that Scotch cook has fallen in the soup; find out if cookhouse is ready.”  “Yes, sir.”  I said nothing about what had happened and returned to the cookhouse to find six Algerians devouring the officers’ rations in such fashion as to make one think of the man in the side show who was advertised in letters twenty feet deep as the original snake-eater of South America; there wasn’t enough left for a one-man meal.  I reported to the O.C. that there were no signs of Scotty but that the cookhouse had been hit by a shell.

“Go and see if he is at the dressing station.”  I went back to the station.  For nearly a mile the wounded and gassed men were lying on each side of the road waiting for conveyances to remove them.  I spoke to a Tommy who had met with a peculiar accident; he had two plates in his mouth and the concussion of a shell explosion in his immediate vicinity had broken the plates into four pieces, leaving him practically toothless.