glance, spoke a few words to the chief preceding him with an aspect of
great deference. The official had at first to think very hard to
recall Julio to mind, but he soon remembered the exploits of Sergeant
Desnoyers. "An excellent soldier," he said. "He will be sent for
immediately, Senator Lacour. . . . He is on duty now with his section in
the first line trenches."

The father, in his anxiety to see him, proposed that they betake
themselves to that advanced site, but his petition made the Chief and
the others smile. Those open trenches within a hundred or fifty yards
from the enemy, with no other defence but barbed wire and sacks of
earth, were not for the visits of civilians. They were always filled
with mud; the visitors would have to crawl around exposed to bullets and
under the dropping chunks of earth loosened by the shells. None but the
combatants could get around in these outposts.

"It is always dangerous there," said the Chief. "There is always random
shooting. . . . Just listen to the firing!"

Desnoyers indeed perceived a distant crackling that he had not noted
before, and he felt an added anguish at the thought that his son must be
in the thick of it. Realization of the dangers to which he must be daily
exposed, now stood forth in high relief. What if he should die in the
intervening moments, before he could see him? . . .

Time dragged by with desperate sluggishness for Don Marcelo. It seemed
to him that the messenger who had been despatched for him would never
arrive. He paid scarcely any attention to the affairs which the Chief
was so courteously showing them--the caverns which served the soldiers
as toilet rooms and bathrooms of most primitive arrangement, the cave
with the sign, "Cafe de la Victoire," another in fanciful lettering,
"Theatre." . . . Lacour was taking a lively interest in all this,
lauding the French gaiety which laughs and sings in the presence of
danger, while his friend continued brooding about Julio. When would he
ever see him?

They stopped near one of the embrasures of a machine-gun position
stationing themselves at the recommendations of the soldiers, on both
sides of the horizontal opening, keeping their bodies well back, but
putting their heads far enough forward to look out with one eye. They
saw a very deep excavation and the opposite edge of ground. A short
distance away were several rows of X's of wood united by barbed wire,
forming a compact fence. About three hundre