Crouching close to the ground, behind the spreading roots of a giant oak, she raised her eyes. Before her lay a sea of smooth, soft mud nearly a mile wide. From the centre rose a solitary tree, from which all had been shot away but two bare branches like outstretched arms above the silence. Beyond, the hills rose again. There was something unearthly in the silence that seemed to brood above that sea of mud. The old priest told her of the living men, French and German, who had stood there day and night sunk in it up to their waists, screaming hour after hour, and waving their arms, sinking into it lower and lower, none able to help them: until at last only their screaming heads were left, and after a time these, too, would disappear: and the silence come again. He rose and took the letter from where he had placed it on the mantelpiece. He stooped and held it out above the fire and a little flame leaped up and seemed to take it from his hand.!

“Oh, may I?” answered Joan. “We’ll keep it off that plane, if you don’t mind,” answered Joan with a touch of severity.

“Bit of bad luck for both of us,” suggested Mr. Halliday. “I have been expecting every morning to find her gone,” said the girl. “I think she only waited to finish this.” She gently unfolded the fine lawn robe, and they saw the delicate insertion and the wonderful, embroidery. “I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”