t be as much
noticed as if a piece of coping from a high building had fallen and
extinguished us on Broadway, which would be a relatively novel way
of dying. Being killed in war had long ceased to be a novelty on the
continent of Europe.

We seemed in a dead world, except for the leisurely, hoarse, muffled
reports of a French gun in the woods on either side of the open space
where we stood. Through our glasses we could see quite clearly the
line of the German front trench, which was in the outskirts of a village
on higher ground than the French. Not a human being was visible.
Both sides were watching for any move of the other, meanwhile lying
tight under cover. By day they were marooned. All supplies and all
reliefs of men who are to take their turn in front go out by night.

There were no men in the trench where we stood; those who would
man it in case of danger were in the adjoining woods, where they had
only to cut down saplings and make shelters to be as comfortable as
in a winter resort camp in the Adirondacks. Any minute they might
receive a call--which meant death for many. But they were used to
that, and their card games went on none the less merrily.

"No farther?" we asked our major.

"No farther!" he said. "This is risk enough for you. It looks very
peaceful, but the enemy could toss in some marmites if it pleased
him." Perhaps he was exaggerating the risk for the sake of a realistic
effect on the sightseers. No matter! In time one was to have risks
enough in trenches. It was on such an occasion as this, on another
part of the French line, that two correspondents slipped away from
the officers conducting them, though their word of honour was given
not to do so--which adds another reason for military suspicion of the
Press. The officers rang up the nearest telephone which connected
with the front trenches, the batteries, and regimental and brigade
headquarters, to apprehend two men of such-and-such description.
They were taken as easily as a one-eyed, one-eared man, with a
wooden leg and red hair would be in trying to get out of police
headquarters when the doormen had his Bertillon photograph and
measurements to go by.

That battery hidden from aerial observation in the thick forest kept up
its slow firing at intervals. It was "bothering" one of the German
trenches. Fiendish the consistent regularity with which it kept on, and
so easy for the gunners. They had only to slip in a shell, swing a
breech-lo