ge waggons hooded and unhooded, filled with a chaos of equipment that
catches fantastic lights and throws huge muddled shadows on the white
wall of the house.

"Put that light out. Name of God, do you want to have them start
chucking shells into here?" comes a voice shrill with anger. The brisk
trot of the officer's horse is lost in the clangour.

The door of the hut slams to and only a thin ray of orange light
penetrates into the blackness of the road, where with jingle of harness
and clatter of iron and tramp of hoofs, gun after gun, caisson after
caisson, waggon after waggon files by. Now and then the passing stops
entirely and matches flare where men light pipes and cigarettes. Coming
from the other direction with throbbing of motors, a convoy of camions,
huge black oblongs, grinds down the other side of the road. Horses rear
and there are shouts and curses and clacking of reins in the darkness.

Far away where the lowering clouds meet the hills beyond the village a
white glare grows and fades again at intervals: star-shells.

* * * * *

"There's a most tremendous concentration of sanitary sections."

"You bet; two American sections and a French one in this village; three
more down the road. Something's up."

"There's goin' to be an attack at St. Mihiel, a Frenchman told me."

"I heard that the Germans were concentrating for an offensive in the
Four de Paris."

"Damned unlikely."

"Anyway, this is the third week we've been in this bloody hole with our
feet in the mud."

"They've got us quartered in a barn with a regular brook flowing through
the middle of it."

"The main thing about this damned war is ennui--just plain boredom."

"Not forgetting the mud."

Three ambulance drivers in slickers were on the front seat of a car. The
rain fell in perpendicular sheets, pattering on the roof of the car and
on the puddles that filled the village street. Streaming with water,
blackened walls of ruined houses rose opposite them above a rank growth
of weeds. Beyond were rain-veiled hills. Every little while, slithering
through the rain, splashing mud to the right and left, a convoy of
camions went by and disappeared, truck after truck, in the white
streaming rain.

Inside the car Tom Randolph was playing an accordion, letting strange
nostalgic little songs filter out amid the hard patter of the rain.

"_Oh, I's been workin' on de railroad
All de livelong day;
I