soldier looked at him scornfully. "He goes an'
saves yer mouldy life and then yer bleats. Got yer bib, Reggie
darling?"

"Not so much of your row." The corporal had come back again. "This
ain't a ruddy colony of rooks in the nesting season. Now, Simpkins,
you and Ginger--first relief. There's your periscope--you can relieve
them other two."

"Where's the periscope?" asked Reginald of his companion in a whisper.

"The glass up there, you flat-faced perisher--hidden in the stones.
Wot d'you think it is? A noyster laying eggs!"

The trench settled down to silence as the company relief was completed,
and Reginald morosely nursed his grievance. Much of the gentle
flattery to which he had been accustomed at Mogg's Mammoth Emporium
seemed conspicuous by its absence in this new sphere in which he found
himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, people seemed positively
rude at times, even ruder than they had been at home. He confided as
much in an aggrieved whisper to the unsympathetic Ginger.

"Rude!" That worthy spat with violence and accuracy. "You wait till
you bump into Shorty Bill. Rude! Gawd! 'E's a 'oly terror."

"Who is Shorty Bill?" queried Reggie, his eyes fixed on the glass whose
mysteries he was beginning to understand.

But Ginger was in no mood for further confidences. "You'll find out
fast enough 'oo Shorty is. 'E's down 'ere to-day. You watch that
there periscope. This ain't no rest cure--this bit 'ere. It's 'ell."

"It seems pretty quiet," ventured the watcher after a short silence.

"Yus! That's wot the last man said wot I was with behind this wall.
There's 'is brains on that stone behind you."

With an involuntary shudder Reginald looked round at the stone, on
which the grim stains still remained. "What did it?" he asked, barely
above a whisper.

"Black Fritz," answered the other. "'E's a sniper, what lives
opposite; and 'e's paid for 'is keep that swine 'as--paid for 'is keep.
Charlie Turner, an' 'Arry, an' Ginger Woodward, an' Nobby Clark, an'
the sergeant-major, an' two orficers. Yus--'e's paid for 'is keep, 'e
'as--'as Master Black Fritz."

"And he's over there," said Reggie, a little breathlessly.

"Yus. Where the 'ell do you think 'e is? In an aeryplane?" Once
again Ginger spat dispassionately, and then relapsed into a silence
from which he refused to be drawn until the presence of two more men
beside him indicated that the hour of relief had come.

"Now lo