h into a gentle
slope, some one is seated. A faint light still prevails. The tranquil
attitude of this man as he looks reflectively in front of him is
sculptural and striking. Stooping, I recognize him as Corporal
Bertrand. He turns his face towards me, and I feel that he is looking
at me through the shadows with his thoughtful smile.

"I was coming to look for you," he says; "they're organizing a guard
for the trench until we've got news of what the others have done and
what's going on in front. I'm going to put you on double sentry with
Paradis, in a listening-post that the sappers have just dug."

We watch the shadows of the passers-by and of those who are seated,
outlined in inky blots, bowed and bent in diverse attitudes under the
gray sky, all along the ruined parapet. Dwarfed to the size of insects
and worms, they make a strange and secret stirring among these
shadow-hidden lands where for two years war has caused cities of
soldiers to wander or stagnate over deep and boundless cemeteries.

Two obscure forms pass in the dark, several paces from us; they are
talking together in low voices--"You bet, old chap, instead of
listening to him, I shoved my bayonet into his belly so that I couldn't
haul it out."

"There were four in the bottom of the hole. I called to 'em to come
out, and as soon as one came out I stuck him. Blood ran down me up to
the elbow and stuck up my sleeves."

"Ah!" the first speaker went on, "when we are telling all about it
later, if we get back, to the other people at home, by the stove and
the candle, who's going to believe it? It's a pity, isn't it?"

"I don't care a damn about that, as long as we do get back," said the
other; "I want the end quickly, and only that."

Bertrand was used to speak very little ordinarily, and never of
himself. But he said, "I've got three of them on my hands. I struck
like a madman. Ah, we were all like beasts when we got here!"

He raised his voice and there was a restrained tremor in it: "it was
necessary," he said, "it was necessary, for the future's sake."

He crossed his arms and tossed his head: "The future!" he cried all at
once as a prophet might. "How will they regard this slaughter, they
who'll live after us, to whom progress--which comes as sure as
fate--will at last restore the poise of their conscience? How will they
regard these exploits which even we who perform them don't know whether
one should compare them with those of Plutarch's and