dden hospital, a marvel of underground
compactness. While we chatted with the surgeon a soldier came in
from the trenches: an elderly, bearded man, with a good average
civilian face--the kind that one runs against by hundreds in any
French crowd. He had a scalp-wound which had just been dressed, and
was very pale. The Colonel stopped to ask a few questions, and then,
turning to him, said: "Feeling rather better now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. In a day or two you'll be thinking about going back to the
trenches, eh?"

"_I'm going now, sir._" It was said quite simply, and received in
the same way. "Oh, all right," the Colonel merely rejoined; but he
laid his hand on the man's shoulder as we went out.

Our next visit was to a sod-thatched hut, "At the sign of the
Ambulant Artisans," where two or three soldiers were modelling and
chiselling all kinds of trinkets from the aluminum of enemy shells.
One of the ambulant artisans was just finishing a ring with
beautifully modelled fauns' heads, another offered me a
"Pickelhaube" small enough for Mustard-seed's wear, but complete in
every detail, and inlaid with the bronze eagle from an Imperial
pfennig. There are many such ringsmiths among the privates at the
front, and the severe, somewhat archaic design of their rings is a
proof of the sureness of French taste; but the two we visited
happened to be Paris jewellers, for whom "artisan" was really too
modest a pseudonym. Officers and men were evidently proud of their
work, and as they stood hammering away in their cramped smithy, a
red gleam lighting up the intentness of their faces, they seemed to
be beating out the cheerful rhythm of "I too will something make,
and joy in the making."...

Up the hillside, in deeper shadow, was another little structure; a
wooden shed with an open gable sheltering an altar with candles and
flowers. Here mass is said by one of the conscript priests of the
regiment, while his congregation kneel between the fir-trunks,
giving life to the old metaphor of the cathedral-forest. Near by was
the grave-yard, where day by day these quiet elderly men lay their
comrades, the _peres de famille_ who don't go back. The care of this
woodland cemetery is left entirely to the soldiers, and they have
spent treasures of piety on the inscriptions and decorations of the
graves. Fresh flowers are brought up from the valleys to cover them,
and when some favourite comrade goes, the men scorning ephemeral
tributes, club