double waiting. Waiting for battle was now secondary. In a tiny slit
trench on the forward edge of a railway embankment Private Brennon
remarked upon the locomotion of the foreign frog.

"Will you look at 'em walk!" said Spike. "Just like an animal! Don't
they ever learn to hop like regular gorfs?"

Said Private Cowan: "I suppose you saw that girl back there the other
day?"

"Me and the regiment," said Spike, and chewed gum discreetly.

"She's a girl from back home. Funny! I'd never taken much notice of her
before."

"You took a-plenty back there. You've raised your average awful high.
I'll say it!"

"I hardly knew what I was doing."

"Didn't you? We did!"

"Since then sometimes I forget what we're here for."

"Don't worry, kid! You'll be told."

"It's funny how things happen that you never expected, but afterward you
see it was natural as anything."

* * * * *

At midnight the quiet sky split redly asunder. German guns began to feel
a way to Paris. The earth rocked in a gentle rhythm under a rain of
shells. Shrapnel and gas lent vivacity to the assault. Guns to their
utmost reach swept the little valley like a Titan's sickle. Private
Cowan nestled his cheek against the earthen side of his little slit
trench and tried to remember what she had worn that last night in
Newbern. Something glistening, warm in colour, like ripe fruit; and a
rusty braid bound her head. She had watched, doubtfully, to see if
people were not impatient at her talk. A rattlepate, old Sharon called
her. She was something else now; some curious sort of woman, older, not
afraid. She wouldn't care any more if people were impatient.

At four o'clock of that morning the bombardment of the front line gave
way to a rolling barrage. Close behind this, hugging it, as the men
said, came gray waves of the enemy. It was quieter after the barrage had
passed: only the tack-tack of machine guns and the clash of meeting
bayonets.

"Going to have some rough stuff," said Private Brennon.

For a long time then Private Cowan was so engrossed with the routine of
his present loose trade that the name of Whipple seemed to have no room
in his mind. For four hours he had held a cold rifle and thought. Now
the gun was hot, its bayonet wet, and he thought not at all. When it was
over he was one of fifty-two men left of his company that had numbered
two hundred and fifty-one. But his own uniform would still be clean of
wound