Lord X----, the deserter of the belfry! The great mine at La Boisselle was a wonderful sight.

One morning I was wandering about the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk--not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel.

I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater.

I felt myself in another world.

This enormous hole, 320 yards round at the top, with sides so steep one could not climb down them, was the vast, terrific work of man.