ough the fork of a certain marked twig within arm's reach.

"If she speaks, we want to know it," Guahn says; "I can see her from
here when she flashes and there's another man who can see her from
another place. You see we get an intersection of angles on her and then
we know where she is just as though she had sent her address. Two
minutes later we drop a card on her and keep her warm."

"Is that that gun from Russia we heard about?" Griffin asks.

"No," answers Guahn, "we are not looking for her from that station.
Besides, she isn't Russian. She was made by the British, used by the
Russians, captured by the Germans and in turn is used by them against
Americans. We have found pieces of her shell and they all have an
English trade mark on them. She fires big eight inch stuff."

Griffin is watching in another direction for another flash and Stanton
is on the lookout for signal flares and the flash of a signal light
projector which might be used in case the telephone communication is
disturbed by enemy fire. It is then that the runners at the base of the
tree must carry the message back by horse.

Only an occasional thump is heard forward in the darkness. Now and then
machine guns chatter insanely as they tuck a seam in the night. At
infrequent intervals, a star shell curves upward, bursts, suspends its
silent whiteness in mid-air, and dies.

In our tree top all seems quiet and so is the night. There is no moon
and only a few stars are out. A penetrating dampness takes the place of
cold and there is that in the air that threatens a change of weather.

The illuminated dial of my watch tells me that it is three minutes of
one and I communicate the information to the rest of the Irish quartet.
In three minutes, the little world that we look upon from our tree top
is due to change with terrific suddenness and untold possibilities.

Somewhere below in the darkness and to one side, I hear the clank of a
ponderous breech lock as the mechanism is closed on a shell in one of
the heavy guns. Otherwise all remains silent.

Two minutes of one. Each minute seems to drag like an hour. It is
impossible to keep one's mind off that unsuspecting group of humans out
there in that little section of German trench upon which the heavens are
about to fall. Griffin leans over the railing and calls to the runners
to stand by the horses' heads until they become accustomed to the coming
roar.

One minute of one. We grip the railing and wai