suit clambers up with the aid of his umbrella.

Says Barque, "You've seen the station-master at the Gare du Nord, all
in his Sunday best, and opening the door of a first-class compartment
for a rich sportsman on the first day of the shooting? With his
'Montez, monsieur le Propritaire!'--you know, when the toffs are all
togged up in brand-new outfits and leathers and ironmongery, and
showing off with all their paraphernalia for killing poor little
animals!"

Three or four poilus who were quite without their accouterments have
disappeared underground. The others sit as though paralyzed. Even the
pipes go out, and nothing is heard but the babble of talk exchanged by
the officers and their guests.

"Trench tourists," says Barque in an undertone, and then louder--"This
way, mesdames et messieurs"--in the manner of the moment.

"Chuck it!" whispers Farfadet, fearing that Barque's malicious tongue
will draw the attention of the potent personages.

Some heads in the group are now turned our way. One gentleman who
detaches himself and comes up wears a soft hat and a loose tie. He has
a white billy-goat beard, and might be an artiste. Another follows him,
wearing a black overcoat, a black bowler hat, a black beard, a white
tie and an eyeglass.

"Ah, ah! There are some poilus," says the first gentleman. "These are
real poilus, indeed."

He comes up to our party a little timidly, as though in the Zoological
Gardens, and offers his hand to the one who is nearest to him--not
without awkwardness, as one offers a piece of bread to the elephant.

"He, he! They are drinking coffee," he remarks.

"They call it 'the juice,'" corrects the magpie-man.

"Is it good, my friends?" The soldier, abashed in his turn by this
alien and unusual visitation, grunts, giggles, and reddens, and the
gentleman says, "He, he!" Then, with a slight motion of the head, he
withdraws backwards.

The assemblage, with its neutral shades of civilian cloth and its
sprinkling of bright military hues--like geraniums and hortensias in
the dark soil of a flowerbed--oscillates, then passes, and moves off
the opposite way it came. One of the officers was heard to say, "We
have yet much to see, messieurs les journalistes."

When the radiant spectacle has faded away, we look at each other. Those
who had fled into the funk-holes now gradually and head first disinter
themselves. The group recovers itself and shrugs its shoulders.

"They're journalists," says T