The person addressed, a swarthy little boy wearing the uniform and
stripe of a lance-corporal of the Twenty-first Canadian Machine Gun
Section, took a long careful look around the sky, hastily swallowed a
strip of bacon he had in his fingers and as he darted into a little
"rabbit-burrow" sort of tunnel, flung back the words; "Hell, yes; this
looks like a fine day for a murder." In a few moments he reappeared
with a water-bottle and a large chunk of bread. Hastily filling the
former from a convenient petrol tin and cramming the latter into his
pockets, he walked over to the older man and divested him of some of
the paraphernalia with which he was festooned. He took a long case
containing a telescope, another carrier holding the tripod, two
bandoliers of ammunition and a large haversack.

"How we going in?"

"Straight across," said the sniper.

"Ver-re-well, young-fella-me-lad, if you can stand it I can," said the
youngster, for he knew full well that to go from there to Sniper's
Barn in broad daylight meant to expose himself to observation from
"Germany," only about five hundred yards away, and with a fat chance
of playing the part of "the sniper sniped."

Without another word they departed. The sentry on guard at the
crossing of the creek volunteered the cheerful hope that they'd get
pinked before they got across the field, upon which the boy assured
him that he would be drinking real beer in London when the pessimistic
sentry was "pushing up the daisies" in Flanders. Crossing the open
field to a hedge, they slipped into a shallow remnant of an old French
trench, just in time to escape a snapping bullet which was aimed about
one second too late. From here they crawled carefully along the hedge,
bullets cutting intermittently through the bare branches above them
and, at last, came to a small opening that gave entrance to a garden,
about one hundred yards from a group of demolished farm buildings.
Here they rested for a few minutes, while the bullets continued to
"fan" the hedge up which they had come and which led to the buildings.

The boy--"Bou" the other called him--worked his way along the ground
to an old cherry tree and was about to lift up a sort of trap-door at
its roots when the other stopped him.

"Never mind the gun," he said, "we'll just wait here until they do
their morning strafe and then go into the buildings. I want to try for
a few of them over on Piccadilly to-day and you can't use a machine
g