"There ain't much to see 'ere, I'm afraid, miss," said the latter apologetically. According to his lights, Bill spoke the truth. To his accustomed eyes there was nothing to be seen worthy of special mention; but to Isobel—pitch-forked straight from her sheltered, mindless life into the very heart of the battle area—it was far otherwise.

Her first feeling was that her dream had suddenly turned to horrible nightmare. Surely nothing but distorted fancy could have produced the scene before her eyes! It was as though the earth had been some stricken monster, which had stiffened into death in the very midst of the maddened writhings of its last agony. For the most part it was a land without landmarks—a land featureless, but torn and tortured, poisoned and pulverized, where the eye could find no certain resting-place and the mind no relief. On every side lay the same desolate waste, pockmarked with shell-holes, each of which was half filled with stagnant and stinking water, on the surface of which was an oozing and fetid scum. Here and there the ragged remains of a barbed-wire entanglement stood out above the general welter; here and there—but very rarely—a few scattered stones indicated where once had stood a cottage; here and there fluttered decayed rags of blue or khaki or field-gray.... Cartridge-cases, bits of[Pg 74] equipment, bully-beef tins—all kinds of abandoned rubbish were scattered about.

[Pg 74]

On the right ran the main road—the one feature of the whole pitiful panorama which still retained some individuality. Once it had been famous for its avenue of tall trees. Those trees still flanked the roadway, but now the tallest of them was a ravaged stump standing a bare four feet above the ground, and the same gun-fire that had smitten them down had smashed the road itself into a sickly yellow pulp.

Once, no doubt, the road had run between fields green with grass or young corn; but now it seemed to Isobel beyond imagining that life could ever again come near to it. Even the vilest weed might shudder to grow on earth's dead body, mangled and corrupted and shamefully exposed....

Alf's voice broke the silence.

"It's a bit dull 'ere, miss," he said, with cheerful bathos. "There ain't much to show yer. But see yon mound over there on the left? That was a church once, that was. But you can 'unt all day and never find nothing of the buildin', all except the church bell;—on'y it's too far to walk in them boots. One of our C.T.'s—communication trenches, I should say—runs 

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