stroke on the part of the French Command, and a shattering
misfortune to the enemy. Indeed, it took the sting out of their attack
entirely; it sent those of their men who had survived this awful ordeal
racing back to cover; and it put a peremptory and sudden stop to the
cunning German effort to drive in that wedge they had already inserted
along the Meuse and so to shorten dangerously the base of the Verdun
salient.

"Fall in, men, fall in! We are going to move from the position,
handing it over to others of our comrades. Fall in there, men!"

"A move!" ejaculated Jules. "Then where to?"

Henri shrugged his shoulders.

"Anywhere--who cares?" he declared, with a species of desperation.
"There's fighting all round, so one place is neither worse nor better
than another. But there's one thing that is quite apparent; men are
hardly wanted here any longer, and a thin sprinkling of our soldiers
can hold these trenches quite as easily as hosts of them. For the guns
yonder, those guns on Mort Homme and 304, command the Cote de Talou and
the Cote du Poivre far better than could our rifles; so our commanders,
who no doubt want men in other places; are thinning out our lines and
are sending us to reinforce another portion of the salient."

Creeping along the battered trenches, crawling across masses of tumbled
earth, where communication-trenches had once existed, and, by slow
degrees, moving to a part where a fold in the ground gave some shelter,
though little enough, from the shells which the German guns still sent,
the depleted regiment to which Henri and Jules belonged was finally
massed in the hollow, and, having been fed there and rested for a
while, was marched to the east, towards the fort of Douaumont. That
night, indeed, after darkness had fallen, they once more repeated the
process of scrambling along shattered trenches, and when the morning of
the 25th dawned--a cold and bitter morning with snow-flakes filling the
air and whirling across the landscape--they found themselves looking
down the steep slopes of the plateau of Douaumont, towards the German
positions, and watching, spellbound almost, another demonstration of
the power and skill of the German gunners.

"Yes, my friends, they have been at that for hours past," a comrade
lying beside them in the trenches told them, as he pointed a finger at
the dull-grey outline of Douaumont fort, lying not so far from them.
"Believe me, one would have thought, from t