l farther, and I will tell you something of the
position: there, to the left of you, is Brabant, just round the corner
of the hill, though you can't quite see it, and to the left of that
again, the river, with the village of Forges just across the water, and
Bethincourt and the Mort Homme Hill close to it. Now look to your
right. There's Gremilly lying near the railway, and farther along
still, beyond Ormes, is Cincery, and south of it Etain, while
immediately beyond are the heights of Douaumont, with Vaux closely
adjacent."

Peering through their loopholes, Jules and Henri spent a useful and
interesting half-hour in watching the scene before them. They were
standing in a trench dug across the gentle slope of a hill which at one
time, in those days of peace preceding the war, had been thickly clad
with fir-trees--a slope now denuded altogether, and presenting only
innumerable stumps, standing up like so many sentinels, while those
nearer to the trenches had barbed wire stretched between them, making a
metal mesh which would require most strenuous efforts to break. Not a
soul was to be seen in front of them; not a figure flitted through the
woods in the direction of the Germans' position, while as for the
Boche, there was not one in evidence, though during that half-hour they
detected the line which indicated the enemy trenches, and heard more
than once the snap of a rifle.

"And it is ever thus, Henri and Jules," the Sergeant told them. "We
stand to arms in the early morning, just as now, waiting for the attack
which, it is whispered, will be made upon us, and which never comes.
Indeed, to me it seems that the Germans have for days past given up all
idea of an advance in this direction; and sometimes not even a rifle is
fired, while the cannon is never heard."

If no one was to be seen in front of the French fire-trenches; or in
front of the cunning pits where machine-guns were hidden, there was yet
ample movement, and plenty of people, close at hand to drive ennui from
the minds of Henri and his comrade. There were soldiers everywhere
along the trench--merry fellows, who sat about the fire--for in this
month of February the early mornings were very chilly--who smoked their
pipes and laughed and chatted, and who watched as breakfast was made
ready. There were men carefully attending to trench-mortars, others
polishing their rifles, and yet others again who had crept by deep
tunnels to the cunning positions in