re. And the ordinary small talk is not currency in such a
situation.

We shook hands and I think I wished him luck. Then he went back again
to the long hours and days of waiting.

I passed under his telephone wires. Some day he will telephone that a
charge is coming. He will give all the particulars calmly, concisely.
Then the message will break off abruptly. He will have sent his last
warning. For that is the way these men at the advance posts die.

As we started again I was no longer frightened. Something of his
courage had communicated itself to me, his courage and his philosophy,
perhaps his faith.

The priest had become a soldier; but he was still a priest in his
heart. For he had buried the German dead in one great grave before the
church, and over them had put the cross of his belief.

It was rather absurd on the way back over the path of death to be
escorted by a cat. It led the way over the fascines, treading daintily
and cautiously. Perhaps one of the destroyed houses at the outpost had
been its home, and with a cat's fondness for places it remained there,
though everything it knew had gone; though battle and sudden death had
usurped the place of its peaceful fireside, though that very fireside
was become a heap of stone and plaster, open to winds and rain.

Again and again in destroyed towns I have seen these forlorn cats
stalking about, trying vainly to adjust themselves to new conditions,
cold and hungry and homeless.

We were challenged repeatedly on the way back. Coming from the
direction we did we were open to suspicion. It was necessary each time
to halt some forty feet from the sentry, who stood with his rifle
pointed at us. Then the officer advanced with the word.

Back again, then, along the road, past the youthful sentry, past other
sentries, winding through the barbed-wire barricade, and at last,
quite whole, to the House of the Barrier again. We had walked three
miles in front of the Belgian advanced trenches, in full view of the
Germans. There had been no protecting hedge or bank or tree between us
and that ominous line two hundred yards across. And nothing whatever
had happened.

Captain F---- was indignant. The officers in the House of the Barrier
held up their hands. For men such a risk was legitimate, necessary. In
a woman it was foolhardy. Nevertheless, now that it was safely over,
they were keenly interested and rather amused. But I have learned that
the gallant captain and the o