are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. There were
not many wounded, though they were coming in, and the Doctor was not for
the moment very busy.

We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, be
seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses and
surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if there
came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, possibly death.
Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young officers, all
wounded, _running_ up from the ambulance at the gate, which had just
brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The first--a
splendid kilted figure--had his head bound up; the others were apparently
wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be quite
unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a success, a
great success, and they had been in it!

The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations
close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through
Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The
little town indeed with its picturesque _place_ is constantly shelled.
But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like
his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother
come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news
of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to
school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though
no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is
still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English
Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have
already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and
the French and Belgian populations are among the British--or shall I say