see the fire-warden's red poster warning you to stamp out
the ashes, and to be careful where you threw your matches. Then the
path dived into a trench with pink walls, and, overhead, arches of green
branches rising higher and higher until they interlocked and shut out
the sky. The trench led to a barrier of logs as round as a flour-barrel,
the openings plugged with moss, and the whole hidden in fresh pine
boughs. It reminded you of those open barricades used in boar hunting,
and behind which the German Emperor awaits the onslaught of thoroughly
terrified pigs.

Like a bird's nest it clung to the side of the hill, and, across a
valley, looked at a sister hill a quarter of a mile away.

"On that hill," said the colonel, "on a level with us, are the Germans."

Had he told me that among the pine-trees across the valley Santa Claus
manufactured his toys and stabled his reindeer I would have believed
him. Had humpbacked dwarfs with beards peeped from behind the velvet
tree trunks and doffed red nightcaps, had we discovered fairies dancing
on the moss carpet, the surprised ones would have been the fairies.

In this enchanted forest to talk of Germans and war was ridiculous. We
were speaking in ordinary tones, but in the stillness of the woods our
voices carried, and from just below us a dog barked.

"Do you allow the men to bring dogs into the trenches?" I asked. "Don't
they give away your position?"

"That is not one of our dogs," said the colonel. "That is a German
sentry dog. He has heard us talking."

"But that dog is not across that valley," I objected. "He's on this
hill. He's not two hundred yards below us."

"But, yes, certainly," said the colonel. Of the man on duty behind the
log barrier he asked:

"How near are they?"

"Two hundred yards," said the soldier. He grinned and, leaning over the
top log, pointed directly beneath us.

[Illustration: War in the forest.

A cemetery for soldiers killed in the Vosges.]

It was as though we were on the roof of a house looking over the edge at
some one on the front steps. I stared down through the giant pine-trees
towering like masts, mysterious, motionless, silent with the silence of
centuries. Through the interlacing boughs I saw only shifting shadows
or, where a shaft of sunlight fell upon the moss, a flash of vivid
green. Unable to believe, I shook my head. Even the _boche_ watchdog,
now thoroughly annoyed, did not convince me. As though reading my
doubts,