, workers in the
forest, giving an exhibition cut. Two of a Canadian team were sitting on
a log next to me, yarning in the slow, quizzical drawl of the Canadian
countryman, when some of their mates sat down beside them. The man next
me turned to them, and the next instant they were all talking French
among themselves, talking it as their native tongue. Their officer, a
handsome youngster, spoke it too. It was not till that moment that I
realised that most of these Canadian woodsmen here were French.

Meanwhile the exhibition chop went on. The French woodsmen were digging
at the roots of their trees with long, ancient axes, more like a cold
chisel than a modern axe. "I think I could do as well with a knife and
fork," said one great kindly Australian as he watched with a smile.

But, to my mind, that exhibition was the most impressive of all. For
every one of those who took part in it was either an old man or a slip
of a slender boy.

CHAPTER X

IDENTIFIED

_France, June 28th._

It was about three months ago, more or less. The German observer,
crouched up in the platform behind the trunk of a tree, or in a chimney
with a loose brick in it--in a part of the world where the country
cottages, peeping over the dog-rose hedges, have more broken bricks in
them than whole ones--saw down a distant lane several men in strange
hats. The telescope wobbled a bit, and in the early light all objects in
the landscape took on much the same grey colour.

The observer rubbed his red eyes and peered again. Down the white streak
winding across a distant green field were coming a couple more of these
same hats. I expect Fritz saw a good number of them in those days. Many
of the wearers of those hats had never seen an aeroplane before; much
less two aeroplanes, fighting a duel with machine-guns at close range,
10,000 feet over their heads, or being sniped at by a battery of hidden
15-pounder guns, every shot marking itself for the open-mouthed
spectators by its little white cotton-wool shell burst.

The German observer spent several hours jotting painful notes into a
well-thumbed pocket-book, staring in the intervals through his
telescope. Then the tree shook. Something ponderous from below felt its
way up the creaking ladder. A red face, like the face of the sun, peered
over the platform.

"Anything new, Fritz?" it puffed.

"Ja; those new troops we have noticed yesterday--I think they were
Australians."

So the observer