in the orchestra--front row--last week. Got
a touch of trench fever."

"D'you mean the front line trenches?" Tom asked.

"Yup. Oh, look at Bricky!" he added suddenly. "You carrying wire,
Bricky? There's a target for a sniper for you--hair as red as----"

"Just stick around at the other end of it," interrupted "Bricky" as he
passed, "and listen to what you hear."

"Here come the tanks," said Tom's neighbor, "and there's the Jersey
Snipe perched on the one over at the other end. Good-_night_, Fritzie!"

The whole scene reminded Tom vaguely of the hasty, quiet picking up and
departure of the circus in the night which, as a little boy, he had sat
up to watch. There were the tanks, half a dozen of them (and he knew
there were more elsewhere), covered with soldiers and waiting in the
darkness like elephants. Troops were constantly departing, for the front
trenches he supposed.

Though he had never yet been before the lines, his experience as a rider
and his close touch with the fighting men had given him a pretty good
military sense in the matter of geography--that is, he understood now
without being told the geographical relation of one place to another in
the immediate neighborhood. Dispatch-riders acquire this sort of extra
sense very quickly and they come to have a knowledge of the lay of the
land infinitely more accurate than that of the average private soldier.

Tom knew that this village, which was now the scene of hurried
preparation and mysterious comings and goings, was directly behind the
trench area. He knew that somewhere back of the village was the
artillery, and he believed that the village of Cantigny stood in the
same relation to the German trenches that this billet village stood to
the Allied trenches; that is, that it was just behind the German lines
and that the German artillery was still farther back. He had heard
enough talk about trench warfare to know how the Americans intended to
conduct this operation.

But he had never seen an offensive in preparation, either large or
small, for there had been no American offensives--only raids, and of
course he had not participated in these. It seemed to him that now, at
last, he was drawn to the very threshold of active warfare only to be
compelled to sit silent and gaze upon a scene every detail of which
aroused his longing for action. The hurried consultation of officers,
the rapid falling in line in the darkness, the clear brisk words of
command, the