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. Miracles had already become commonplaces; what might have been epic once was incidental now. I hearkened and believed. At his command a sergeant plugged in certain stops upon a keyboard and then when the Colonel, taking a hand telephone up from a table, had talked into it in German he passed it into my hands. "The captain at the other end of the line knows English," he said. "I've just told him you wish to speak with him for a minute." I pressed the rubber disk to my ear. "Hello!" I said. "Hello!" came back the thin-strained answer. "This is such and such a trench"--giving the number--"in front of Cerny. What do you want to know?" "What's the news there?" I stammered fatuously. A pleasant little laugh tinkled through the strainer. "Oh, it's fairly quiet now," said the voice. "Yesterday afternoon shrapnel fire rather mussed us up, but to-day nothing has happened. We're just lying quiet and enjoying the fine weather. We've had much rain lately and my men are enjoying the change." So that was all the talk I had with a man who had for weeks been living in a hole in the ground with a ditch for an exercise ground and the brilliant prospects of a violent death for his hourly and daily entertainment. Afterward when it was too late I thought of a number of leading questions which I should have put to that captain. Undoubtedly there was a good story in him could you get it out. We came through a courtyard at the north side of the building, and the courtyard was crowded with automobiles of all the known European sizes and patterns and shapes--automobiles for scout duty, with saw-edged steel prows curving up over the drivers' seats to catch and cut dangling wires; automobiles fitted as traveling pharmacies and needing only red- and-green lights to be regular prescription drug stores; automobile- ambulances rigged with stretchers and first-aid kits; automobiles for carrying ammunition and capable of moving at tremendous speed for tremendous distances; automobile machine guns or machine-gun automobiles, just as suits you; automobile cannon; and an automobile mail wagon, all holed inside, like honeycomb, with two field-postmen standing up in it, back to back, sorting out the contents of snugly packed pouches; and every third letter was not a letter, strictly speaking, at all, but a small flat parcel containing chocolate or cigars or handkerchiefs or socks or even light sweaters--such gifts as might be sent
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