ight thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.

"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz
like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten,
our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip!
pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing
can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. _Plusieurs
morts, plusieurs blesses._ Run! Some go right, some left. The second
shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes
the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as
the 75."

"What about the gun that sent this over?"

Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic
shells with which the Germans raked La Bassee Road in the early stages
of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not
the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell
is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson."
The shell relic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, (p. 282)
was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye,
opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene
of the great war become fashionable, the woman of the _estaminet_ is
going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many
mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way
with a long purse, "apres la guerre." At present a needy urchin will
sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and
horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely
with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.

"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the
clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which
lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But
compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes
boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out
before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in
shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes
silently, it's quicker than its own sound."

"Do you work here?" asked Pryor. (p. 283)

"I work here," said the potato-peeler.

"In a coal-mine?"

"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."

"Always?"

"Sometimes," said the man.