spiring. At nine o'clock there
was a halt of sufficient length to serve the men with coffee and
bread, and then the march was resumed. By and by shells from the guns
of the Allies began to shriek high over the heads of the marching men,
and were replied to by the enemy shells humming and whining by,
seeking out and endeavoring to silence the Allied artillery. Now and
then one of these missiles would burst in the rear of the column,
sending up a glare of flame and a cloud of dust and debris, but at
what cost in life no one in the line knew.

As the men advanced the mud grew deeper, the way narrower, the
congestion greater. The passing of enemy shells was less frequent, but
precautions for safety were increased. Advantage was taken of ravines,
of fences, of fourth and fifth line trenches. The troops ere not
beyond range of the German sharpshooters, and the swish of bullets was
heard occasionally in the air above the heads of the marchers.

It was toward morning that the destination of the column was reached,
and, in single file, the men of Pen's section passed down an incline
into their first communicating trench, and then past a maze of lateral
trenches to the opening into the salients they were to supply. It was
here that the soldiers whom they were to relieve filed out by them.
Going forward, they took the places of the retiring section. At last
they were in the first line trench, with the enemy trenches scarcely a
hundred meters in front of them. Sentries were placed at the
loop-holes made in the earth embankment, and the remainder of the
section retired to their dug-outs. These under-ground rooms, built
down and out from the trench, and bomb-proof, were capable of holding
from eight to a dozen men. They were carpeted with straw, some of them
had shelves, and in many of them discarded bayonets were driven into
the walls to form hooks. It was in these places that the men who were
off duty rested and ate and slept.

In the gray light of the early June morning, Pen, who had been posted
at one of the loop-holes as a listening sentry, looked out to see what
lay in front of him. But the most that could be seen were the long and
winding earth embankments that marked the lines of the German
entrenchments, and between, on "no man's land," a maze of barbed wire
entanglements. No living human being was in sight, but, at one place,
crumpled up, partly sustained by meshes of wire, there was a ragged
heap, the sight of which sen