silhouette disperses, drifts away,
and--

"The coals is hame, right enough!" comments Private Tosh.

Instantly our guns reply, and we become the humble spectators of an
artillery duel. Of course, if the enemy gets tired of "searching"
the countryside for our guns and takes to "searching" our trenches
instead, we lose all interest in the proceedings, and retire to our
dug-outs, hoping that no direct hits will come our way.

But guns are notoriously erratic in their time-tables, and fickle in
their attentions. It is upon Zacchaeus and Unter den Linden--including
Minnie--that we mainly rely for excitement.

As already recorded, we took over these trenches a few days ago, in
the small hours of the morning. In the ordinary course of events,
relieving parties are usually able to march up under cover of darkness
to the reserve trench, half a mile in rear of the firing line, and
so proceed to their appointed place. But on this occasion the German
artillery happened to be "distributing coal" among the billets behind.
This made it necessary to approach our new home by tortuous ways, and
to take to subterranean courses at a very early stage of the journey.
For more than two hours we toiled along a trench just wide enough to
permit a man to wear his equipment, sometimes bent double to avoid the
bullets of snipers, sometimes knee-deep in glutinous mud.

Ayling, leading a machine-gun section who were burdened with their
weapons and seven thousand rounds of ammunition, mopped his steaming
brow and inquired of his guide how much farther there was to go.

"Abart two miles, sir," replied the youth with gloomy satisfaction.
He was a private of the Cockney regiment whom we were relieving; and
after the manner of his kind, would infinitely have preferred to
conduct us down half a mile of a shell-swept road, leading straight to
the heart of things, than waste time upon an uninteresting but safe
_detour_.

At this Ayling's Number One, who was carrying a machine-gun tripod
weighing forty-eight pounds, said something--something distressingly
audible--and groaned deeply.

"If we'd come the way I wanted," continued the guide, much pleased
with the effect of his words upon his audience, "we'd a' been there be
now. But the Adjutant, 'e says to me--"

"If we had come the way you wanted," interrupted Ayling brutally, "we
should probably have been in Kingdom Come by now. Hurry up!" Ayling,
in common with the rest of those present, was not i