ut it was
coming--unless the behind-the-lines preparations were a gigantic feint.

A quiet dawn, in the quiet trenches of the quiet sector. Desultory
artillery and somewhat less desultory sniping had prevailed throughout
the night, and at daybreak; but nothing out of the ordinary.

Two men on listening-post had been shot; and so had an overcurious
sentry who peeped just an inch too far above a parapet. A shell had
burst in a trench, knocking the telephone connection out of gear and
half burying a squad of sleepers under a lot of earth. Otherwise,
things were drowsily dull.

In a dugout sprawled Top-Sergeant Mahan,--formerly of Uncle Sam's
regular army, playing an uninspiring game of poker with Sergeant Dale
of his company and Sergeant Vivier of the French infantry. The
Frenchman was slow in learning poker's mysteries.

And, anyway, all three men were temporarily penniless and were forced
to play for I.O.U's--which is stupid sport, at best.

So when, from the German line, came a quick sputt-sputt-sputt from a
half-dozen sharpshooters' rifles, all three men looked up from their
desultory game in real interest. Mahan got to his feet with a grunt.

"Some other fool has been trying to see how far he can rubber above the
sandbags without drawing boche fire," he hazarded, starting out to
investigate. "It's a miracle to me how a boche bullet can go through
heads that are so full of first-quality ivory as those rubberers'."

But Mahan's strictures were quite unwarranted. The sharpshooters were
not firing at the parapet. Their scattering shots were flying high, and
hitting against the slope of the hill behind the trenches.

Adown this shell-pocked hillside, as Mahan and the other disturbed
idlers gazed, came cantering a huge dark-brown-and-white collie. The
morning wind stirred the black stippling that edged his tawny fur,
showing the gold-gray undercoat beneath it. His white chest was like a
snowdrift, and offered a fine mark for the German rifles. A bullet or
two sang whiningly past his gayly up-flung head.

A hundred voices from the Here-We-Come trenches hailed the advancing
dog.

"Why, it's Bruce!" cried Mahan in glad welcome. "I might 'a' known he
or another of the collies would be along. I might 'a' known it, when
the telephones went out of commission. He--"

"Regardez-donc!" interrupted the admiring Vivier. "He acts like bullets
was made of flies! Mooch he care for boche lead-pills, ce brave vieux!"

"Yes," g