of things, and the amusing conversation, and the smell of good cigars.  Within, we saw some pleasant drawing-room, with lamps and a big table set with candles and cards, and we felt that the nightingale provided a very charming orchestra.  We listened to it as we listened to amusing conversation, with a sense of comfortable enjoyment and rest.  Why talk of the time when it sang of breaking hearts and high endeavour never satisfied, and things which no one ever knew or guessed except oneself?

It sings now above the sound of death and of tears.  Sometimes I think to myself that God has sent his angel to open the prison doors when I hear that bird in the little wood close beside the tram-way line.

On Thursday, June 3rd, I drove in the “bug” to Boulogne, and took the steamer to England.  I went through a nasty time in Belgium, but now a good deal of queer affection is shown me, and I believe they all rather like me in the corps.

* * * * *

The following brief impression of Miss Macnaughtan’s work at the soup-kitchen forms the most appropriate conclusion to her story of her experiences in Belgium.  She cut it out of some paper, and sent it home to a friend in England, and we seem to learn from it—­more than from any words of her own—­how much she did to help our Allies in their hour of need: 

“It was dark when my car stopped at the little station of Adinkerke, where I had been invited to visit a soup-kitchen established there by a Scotchwoman.  In peace she is a distinguished author; in war she is being a mother to such of the Belgian Army as are lucky enough to pass her way.  I can see her now, against a background of big soup-boilers and cooking-stoves, handing out woollen gloves and mufflers to the men who were to be on sentry duty along the line that night.  It was bitterly cold, and the comforts were gratefully received.

“For a long time this most versatile lady made every drop of the soup that was prepared for the men herself, and she has, so a Belgian military doctor says, saved more lives than he has with her timely cups of hot, nourishing food.  It is only the most seriously wounded men who are taken to the field hospital, the others are carried straight to the railway-station, and have to wait there, sometimes for many hours, till a train can take them on.  Even then trains carrying the wounded have constantly to be shunted to let troop trains through.  But, thanks to the enterprise and hard work of this clever little lady, there is always a plentiful supply of hot food ready for the men who, weak from loss of blood, are often besides faint with hunger.”

PART II

AT HOME

HOW THE MESSAGE WAS DELIVERED

October, 1915.—­So much has happened since I came home from Flanders in June, and I have not had one moment in which to write of it.  I found my house occupied when I returned, so I went to the Petrograd Hotel and stayed there, going out of London for Sundays.