hing.

Across a reach of field faintly were made out the white spots of
another wall of breastworks, the German, at the edge of a stretch of
woods, the Bois du Bies. The British reached these woods in their
advance; but, their aeroplanes being unable to spot the fall of shells
in the mist, they had to fall back for want of artillery support. Along
this line where we stood outside the village they stopped; and to stop
is to set the spades going to begin the defences which, later, had
risen to a man's height, and with rifles and machine-guns had riddled
the German counter-attack.

And the Germans had to go back to the edge of the woods, where
they, too, began digging and building their new line. So the enemies
were fixed again behind their walls of earth, facing each other across
the open, where it was death for any man to expose himself by day.

"Will you have a shot, sir?" one of the sentries asked me.

"At what?"

"Why, at the top of the trench over there, or at anything you see
moving," he said.

But I did not think that it was an invitation for a non-combatant to
accept. If the bullet went over the top of the trench it had still two
thousand yards and more to go, and it might find a target before it
died. So, in view of the law of probabilities, no bullet is quite waste.

"Now, which is my house?" asked Captain P------.

"I really can't find my own home in the dark."

Behind the breastwork were many little houses three or four feet in
height, all of the same pattern, and made of boards and mud. The
mud is put on top to keep out shrapnel bullets.

"Here you are, sir!" said a soldier.

Asking me to wait until he made a light, the captain bent over as if
about to crawl under the top rail of a fence and his head disappeared.
After he had put a match to a candle and stuck it on a stick thrust into
the wall, I could see the interior of his habitation. A rubber sheet
spread on the moist earth served as floor, carpet, mattress, and bed.
At a squeeze there was room for two others besides himself. They
did not need any doormat, for when they lay down their feet would be
at the door.

"Quite cosy, don't you think?" remarked the captain. He seemed to
feel that he had a royal chamber. But, then, he was the kind of man
who might sleep in a muddy field under a wagon and regard the
shelter of the wagon body as a luxury. "Leave your knapsack here,"
he continued, "and we'll see what is doing along the line."

In other