ency was
not clear; but after dinner attention to such trifles is of secondary
importance.

"Percy inaugurates new form of frightfulness," laughed the Major. "May
I be there when you catch your first!"

The conversation dropped; other and more intimate topics anent the fair
ones at home took its place; but in the mind of Percy FitzPercy the
germ of invention was sown. When he went back to his battalion that
night, in their so-called rest-billets, he was thinking. Which was
always a perilous proceeding for Percy.

Now it so happened that his part of the line at the moment had
originally belonged to the Hun. It was a confused bit of trench, in
which miners carried on extensively their reprehensible trade. And
where there are miners there is also spoil. Spoil, for the benefit of
the uninitiated, is the technical name given to the material they
remove from the centre of the earth during the process of driving their
galleries. It is brought up to the surface in sandbags, and is then
carried away and dumped somewhere out of harm's way. In reality it is
generally stacked carefully in the trenches themselves, thereby
completely blocking all traffic; which is by the way.

But after mining has been in progress for some time, and various
craters have been blown and sapped out to, and after trench mortars
have "strafed" consistently for many months and torn the original
surface of the ground to pieces, the actual position of the trenches
themselves becomes haphazard. They cease in many cases to bear the
slightest likeness to the ordinary trenches of commerce; they become
deep gorges in mountains of sandbags. I have sometimes wished that
those officers who apparently write home to devoted bands of female
workers asking for more sandbags would get in touch with me instead. I
shall be delighted to let them have anything up to five million, all
filled, by return; which is again by the way.

To return to Percy. In his part of the front sandbags grew like
pebbles on a shingly beach; and from time to time fresh cuts off the
trenches were opened to allow for further expansion in the sandbag
family. The existing front line in one place had started life as a cut
off the old trench, and had gradually been taken into use as a
permanency, and it was at this point that he stumbled on the great
discovery which was destined to cause all the trouble. How he first
stumbled is not recorded; but early one morning Percy FitzPercy co