s, not looking through it,
his heavy eyes partly closed, his burnt-out pipe between his teeth.

Gary rose from the telephone and joined the card players. They shuffled
and dealt listlessly, seldom speaking save in monosyllables.

After a while Carfax went over to the card table and the young lieutenant
cashed in and took his place at the telescope.

Below in the Alsatian valley spring had already started the fruit buds,
and a delicate green edged the lower snow line.

The lieutenant spoke of it wistfully; nobody paid any attention; he rose
presently and went outdoors to the edge of the precipice--not too near,
for fear he might be tempted to jump out through the sunshine, down into
that inviting world of promise below.

Far underneath him--very far down in the valley--a cuckoo called. Out of
the depths floated the elfin halloo, the gaily malicious challenge of
spring herself, shouted up melodiously from the plains of
Alsace--_Cuckoo!_ _Cuckoo!_ _Cuckoo!_--You poor, sullen, frozen foreigner
up there on the snowy rocks!--_Cuckoo!_ _Cuckoo!_ _Cuckoo!_

The lieutenant of Yukon infantry, whose name was Gray, came back into the
room.

"There's a bird of sorts yelling like hell below," he said to the card
players.

Carfax ran over his cards, rejected three, and nodded. "Well, let him
yell," he said.

"What is it, a Boche dicky-bird insulting you?" asked Gary, in his Yankee
drawl.

Flint, declining to draw cards, got up and went out into the sunshine.
When he returned to the table, he said: "It's a cuckoo.... I wish to God I
were out of this," he added.

They continued to play for a while without apparent interest. Each man had
won his comrades' money too many times to care when Carfax added up debit
and credit and wrote down each man's score. In nine months, alternately
beggaring one another, they had now, it appeared, broken about even.

Gary, an American in British uniform, twitched a newspaper toward himself,
slouched in his chair, and continued to read for a while. The paper was
French and two weeks old; he jerked it about irritably.

Gray, resting his elbows on his knees, sat gazing vacantly out of the
narrow window. For a smart officer he had grown slovenly.

"If there was any trout fishing to be had," he began; but Flint laughed
scornfully.

"What are you laughing at? There must be trout in the valley down there
where that bird is," insisted Gray, reddening.

"Yes, and there are cows and chickens and