ld have recognised him. No
longer the frock coat and pearl tie, no longer the patent-leather boots
and immaculate trousers. In their place a dirty-faced man in khaki,
tastefully draped in flapping sandbags--his boots covered, his hands
stained. Very cautiously he made himself comfortable; with immense
care he laid his rifle--also covered with sacking--in the direction he
required; and then he covered his front and sides with filled bags.
Through a hole--also carefully arranged--his screened telescope covered
the bit of German trench where the day before the German sniper had
lain. Then he waited.

The mists cleared away; the morning sun shone down. From his point of
vantage--for he was seven or eight feet above the trenches below--he
watched the German lines. His fingers itched to pull the trigger two
or three times; and once when he saw a German officer come out of his
dug-out in the second line and lean against the back of the trench,
smoking a fat cigar, he almost yielded to the temptation. But the
splintering of a periscope glass below him, as a German bullet hit it,
told him that the sniper was there--hidden somewhere, and watching too;
and he knew that, perfect though his position was for one shot, that
one shot would probably give him away. And that _one_ shot was for the
sniper, and not to be wasted on a fat Ober Lieutenant. . . .

Three or four hours passed, and the silence was complete. The
perspiration trickled down his neck as he lay there motionless and
clouded the eyepiece of his telescope. Then suddenly he saw a little
black object shoot up into the air from the junction of two trenches
near the German support line--an object which turned over and over in
the air, and fell with a soft thud fifty yards to his right. A
roar--and some sandbags and lumps of chalk flew in all directions,
while fragments pattered down on Reginald out of the sky.

"Hope to God they don't come any closer," he muttered, watching the
next rum jar shoot up. "Anyway, I've marked the place they're coming
from." Then his eyes came back to the sniper's locality, and as they
did so a quiver of excitement ran through him. Utterly regardless of
the second rum jar which burst with a crack behind him, he knew for the
first time the feeling of the big game man who has stalked his quarry
successfully. There, five yards to the left of where he had been
looking, a little stunted bush was moving--_and there was no wind_.
Trembli