s the time in the trenches when life grows more
interesting and death more likely.

"It's dark enough, now," said one of the youngsters who was out on
another scout. "We'll go out with the patrol."

By day, the slightest movement of the enemy is easily and instantly
detected. Light keeps the combatants to the warrens which protect
them from shell and bullet-fire. At night there is no telling what
mischief the enemy may be up to; you must depend upon the ear
rather than the eye for watching. Then the human soldier-fox comes
out of his burrow and sneaks forth on the lookout for prey; both sides
are on the prowl.

"Trained owls would be the most valuable scouts we could have,"
said the young officer. "They would be more useful than aeroplanes
in locating the enemy's gun-positions. A properly reliable owl would
come back and say that a German patrol was out in the wheatfield at
such a point and a machine-gun would wipe out that patrol."

We turned into a side trench, an alley off the main street, leading out
of the front trench toward the Germans.

"Anybody out?" he asked a soldier who was on guard at the end of it.

"Yes, two."

Climbing out of the ditch, we were in the midst of a tangle of barbed
wire protecting the trench front, which was faintly visible in the
starlight. There was a break in the tangle, a narrow cut in the hedge,
as it were, kept open for just such purposes as this. When the patrol
returned it closed the gate again.

"Look out for that wire--just there! Do you see it? We've everything to
keep the Boches off our front lawn except 'Keep off the grass!' signs."

It was perfectly still, a warm summer night without a cat's-paw of
breeze. Through the dark curtain of the sky in a parabola rising from
the German trenches swept the brilliant sputter of red light of a
German flare. It was coming as straight toward us as if it had been
aimed at us. It cast a searching, uncanny glare over the tall wheat in
head between the trenches.

"Down flat!" whispered the officer.

It seemed foolish to grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was no
firing in our neighbourhood; nothing to indicate a state of war between
the British Empire and Germany; no visual evidence of any German
army in France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows as
much about war as this one says you are to prostrate yourself when
you are out between two lines of machine-guns and rifles--between
the fighting powers of England a