houses and women. What of it?"

Gary, in his faded service uniform of a captain, scowled over his
newspaper. "It's bad enough to be here," he said heavily; "so don't let's
talk about it. Quit disputing."

Flint ignored the order.

"If there was anything sportin' to do----"

"Oh, shut up," muttered Carfax. "Do you expect sport on a hog-back?"

Gray picked up a tennis ball and began to play it against the whitewashed
stone wall, using the palm of his hand. Flint joined him presently; Gary
went over to the telephone, set the receiver to his ear and spoke to some
officer in the distant valley on the French side, continuing a spiritless
conversation while watching the handball play. After a while he rose,
shambled out and down among the rocks to the spring where snow lay,
trodden and filthy, and the big, black salamanders crawled half stupefied
in the sun. All his loathing and fear of them kindled again as it always
did at sight of them. "Dirty beasts," he muttered, stumping and stumbling
among the stunted fir trees; "some day they'll bite some of these damn
fools who say they can't bite. And that'll end 'em."

Flint and Gray continued to play handball in a perfunctory way while
Carfax looked on from the telephone without interest. Gary came back, his
shoes and puttees all over wet snow.

"Unless," he said in a monotonous voice, "something happens within the
next few days I'll begin to feel queer in my head; and if I feel it coming
on, I'll blow my bally nut off. Or somebody's." And he touched his service
automatic in its holster and yawned.

After a dead silence:

"Buck up," remarked Carfax; "think how our men must feel in Belfort, never
letting off their guns. Ross rifles, too--not a shot at a Boche since the
damn war began!"

"God!" said Flint, smiting the ball with the palm of his hand, "to think
of those Ross rifles rusting down there and to think of the pink-skinned
pigs they could paunch so cleanly. Did you ever paunch a deer? What a mess
of intestines all over the shop!"

Gary, still standing, began to kick the snow from his shoes. Gray said to
him: "For a dollar of your Yankee money I'd give you a shot at me with
your automatic--you're that slack at practice."

"If it goes on much longer like this I'll not have to pay for a shot at
anybody," returned Gary, with a short laugh.

Gray laughed too, disagreeably, stretching his facial muscles, but no
sound issued.

"We're all going crazy together up her