.
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