heir secret with them,--what they were
and what they might have been. The name that stood was La France.
How much that name had come to mean to him, since he first saw a
shoulder of land bulk up in the dawn from the deck of the
Anchises. It was a pleasant name to say over in one's mind, where
one could make it as passionately nasal as one pleased and never
blush.

Hicks, too, had been lost in his reflections. Now he broke the
silence. "Somehow, Lieutenant, 'mort' seems deader than 'dead.'
It has a coffinish sound. And over there they're all 'tod,' and
it's all the same damned silly thing. Look at them set out here,
black and white, like a checkerboard. The next question is, who
put 'em here, and what's the good of it?"

"Search me," the other murmured absently.

Hicks rolled another cigarette and sat smoking it, his plump face
wrinkled with the gravity and labour of his cerebration. "Well,"
he brought out at last, "we'd better hike. This afterglow will
hang on for an hour,--always does, over here."

"I suppose we had." They rose to go. The white crosses were now
violet, and the black ones had altogether melted in the shadow.
Behind the dead trees in the west, a long smear of red still
burned. To the north, the guns were tuning up with a deep
thunder. "Somebody's getting peppered up there. Do owls always
hoot in graveyards?"

"Just what I was wondering, Lieutenant. It's a peaceful spot,
otherwise. Good-night, boys," said Hicks kindly, as they left the
graves behind them.

They were soon finding their way among shell holes, and jumping
trench-tops in the dark,-beginning to feel cheerful at getting
back to their chums and their own little group. Hicks broke out
and told Claude how he and Dell Able meant to go into business
together when they got home; were going to open a garage and
automobile-repair shop. Under their talk, in the minds of both,
that lonely spot lingered, and the legend: Soldat Inconnu, Mort
pour La France.

XI

After four days' rest in the rear, the Battalion went to the
front again in new country, about ten kilometers east of the
trench they had relieved before. One morning Colonel Scott sent
for Claude and Gerhardt and spread his maps out on the table.

"We are going to clean them out there in F 6 tonight, and
straighten our line. The thing that bothers us is that little
village stuck up on the hill, where the enemy machine guns have a
strong position. I want to get them out of there be