ine. So, now, forward again, leaving the
"trench cleaners" to hunt out those of the enemy who had taken
refuge in holes and caves. Again the rain of hurtling and hissing and
crashing steel. Human fortitude and endurance were indeed no match for
this. Again the clubs and bayonets and wild men reaching with
blood-smeared hands for each other's throats in the darkness.

And then, to Penfield Butler, at last, came the soldier's destiny. It
seemed as though some mighty force had struck him in the breast,
whirled him round and round, toppled him to earth, and left him lying
there, crushed, bleeding and unconscious. How long it was that he lay
oblivious of the conflict he did not know. But when he awakened to
sensibility the rush of battle had ceased. There was no fighting
around him. He had a sense of great suffocation. He knew that he was
spitting blood. He tried to raise his hand, and his revolver fell from
the nerveless fingers that were still grasping it. A little later he
raised his other hand to his breast and felt that his clothing was
torn and soaked. He lifted his head, and in the light of an enemy
flare he looked about him. He saw only the torn soil covered with
crouched and sprawling bodies of the wounded and the dead, and with
wreckage indescribable. Bullets were humming and whistling overhead,
and spattering the ground around him. Men in the agony of their wounds
were moaning and crying near by. He lay back and tried to think. By
the light of the next flare he saw the rough edge of a great
shell-hole a little way beyond him toward the British lines. In the
darkness he tried to crawl toward it. It would be safer there than in
this whistling cross-fire of bullets. He did not dare try to rise. He
could not turn himself on his stomach, the pain and sense of
suffocation were too great when he attempted it. So he pulled himself
along in the darkness on his back to the cavity, and sought shelter
within it. Bodies of others who had attempted to run or creep to it,
and had been caught by Boche bullets on the way, were hanging over its
edge. Under its protecting shoulder were many wounded, treating their
own injuries, helping others as they could in the darkness and by the
fitful light of the German flares. Some one, whose friendly voice was
half familiar, yet sounded strange and far away, dragged the exhausted
boy still farther into shelter, felt of his blood-soaked chest, and
endeavored, awkwardly and crudely, for he him