everywhere. Kick a harmless piece of wood, and in a
few seconds a bomb exploded. Pick up a bit of string from the floor
and another bomb went off. Soon we learned to be wary of the most
innocent objects. Before touching anything we made elaborate
preparations for our safety.

One of the men was greatly annoyed by a wire which hung over his head
when he was asleep, but he did not wish to remove it. He had decided
that it was connected with some devilish device which would do him no
good. Finally, one morning, he could endure this sword of Damocles no
longer. With two boon companions, he carefully attached a string about
fifteen yards long to the wire. They tiptoed gently out of the house
to a discreet distance, and with a yell of triumph, the hero pulled
the string,--and nothing happened!

But there was another side to all this. McKnutt some time afterwards
came in with an interesting story. Some Sappers, he said, had been
digging under a house in the village, presumably for the mysterious
reasons that always drive the Engineers to dig in unlikely places. One
of them pushed his shovel into what had been the cellar of the house,
but as the roof had fallen in on the entrance, they did not know of
its existence. When they finally forced their way in, they found two
German officers and two Frenchwomen in a terribly emaciated condition.
One of the Boches and one of the women lay dead, locked in each
other's arms. The other two still breathed, but when they were brought
up into the open they expired within a few hours without either of
them giving an explanation. The only reason we could find for their
terrible plight was that the women had been forced down there by the
officers to undergo a last farewell, while the Germans were destroying
the village, and that the house had fallen in on top of them. Later,
probably no one knew where they had disappeared, and they were unable
to get out of the ruins or to make themselves heard. The village of
A---- gained a romantic reputation after that, and it was curious to
realize that we had been living there for days while this silent
tragedy was being enacted.

In addition to the destruction in the towns, the beautiful orchards
which are so numerous in France were ruined. Apple, pear, and plum
trees lay uprooted on the ground, and here again the military mind of
the German had been at work. He did not wish the fruit that the trees
would bear in future to fall into our hands.

But a