trench-boards and bricks. Twisting, winding with the poppies and the
weeds meeting over his head, and the water brushing off them against his
face and coat, he walked slowly on. Seven feet deep, perhaps three feet
wide, it might have been a sunken Devonshire lane in model, and a faint
red tinge in the soil helped the illusion.

Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had
all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered
lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following
him at that moment on a tour of inspection. Especially his Uncle John.
Uncle John was something in the City, and looked it. He lived near
Ascot, and nightly slept with a gas-mask beside his bed. He could
imagine Uncle John trembling audibly in that quiet model lane, and
assuring his faithful wife of his ability to protect her. He laughed at
the picture in his mind, and then with a slight frown stopped.

The trench bent sharply to the right, and almost subconsciously he
noticed a hole framed in thick wood, half filled in, in the wall in front
of him. The top had broken. He bent and peered through it. It went
right through the wall in front, and beyond, the same deep communication
trench could be seen stretching away. Just a loophole placed in a
traverse through which a rifle could be fired along a straight thirty
yards of trench, if the Germans ever got in. But to fire a rifle to any
purpose the loop-hole must not be broken, and so the Sapper made a note
before resuming his stroll.

Rounding a bend, a big white board at a cross-roads confronted him. It
advertised two or three salient facts written in large black letters. It
appeared that by turning to the right one would ultimately reach
Leicester Square and an aid post, to say nothing of the Charing Cross
Road, which was a down trench. By turning to the left, on the contrary,
one would reach Regent Street and a pump. It also stated that the name
of our wanderer's present route was the Haymarket, and further affirmed
that it was an up trench. For it will be plain to all that, where a
trench is but three feet wide, it is essential not to have men going both
ways in it--and further, it will also be plain why the aid posts occur in
the down ones.

A further interesting and momentous piece of information was imparted
from another board, to the effect that the name of the trench by which
one could reach the pump on o