"You know the Guild Hall at Wipers?" he exclaimed a moment later.
"No; I haven't been to the actual firing line yet," I returned. "The only time we realise there is a war back here is when the trains of wounded come in; or, on a stormy night, when the wind blows fiercely from the trenches, and the boom of the great guns is driven here intermittently with the gusts."
"As soon as I can stand upon this peg of mine, you and the colonel and I will motor up and see it all," he declared, with assurance.
"Agreed!" I cried. "You may now feel confident of a speedy recovery. But tell me more about 'Wipers.'"
He raised himself on one elbow, and commenced reminiscently: "Our dear old colonel was billeted in the tenement row which used to be in the square of Ypres, close to the Guild Hall. We had been shelled out of place after place, but for several days lately Fritzie had left us in peace. It was too good to last long. One night they started chucking big shells into the cathedral and what was left of the square. I counted fifty-seven falling over and around the colonel's billet. I began to suspect the place. Taken as an exhibition of fire-works, it was a success, but as a health resort it had defects.
"It was about eleven o'clock, and some of the houses in the row had already been hit. Ye gods! Vesuvius in its balmiest days was like a Chinese lantern to this--for a second, in a lull, you would hear the whine of a big shell; then, crash! it went into a building, and shell and house went up together in one frightful smash-up.
"I went over to wake the old boy, as he showed no symptoms of having been disturbed. It was useless to rap--there was such an infernal racket with shells bursting, roofs toppling in and walls falling out. I stumbled up the dark stairs to his room. He was sound asleep--think of it! I spoke to him, but he didn't wake; so I shook him gently by the shoulder and he opened his eyes.
"'Hello, Wellcombe!' he growled, in his rough but genial way. 'What the devil brings you prowling around at this time of night?'
"I told him that I thought the billet was becoming a trifle unsafe, as some of the other houses in the row had already been hit.
"'Is that all you came to tell me?' he asked, with indifference.