"No doubt it is, sor, but it's a good dale safer than stayin' where we wor. An' if there's one sound, Cap'n, that I've larned to rispict more than another in this war, it's the shriek of an oncomin' shell, whin it sames to be comin' in yer direction. Now, duds (shells that fail to explode) is different. D'ye remember, sor, the day we come in to relave the 28th Battalion here, as the colonel, the adjutant, and yersilf were comin' over the crest of the ridge, an' I bringin' up the rear with that luggage of yours?" He looked at me reproachfully, for, though looking after my luggage was part of his duties, he never pretended to like it. "A dud landed just besoide us. The sound of a dud thuddin' into the earth nearboy one is swater to me than ever was the gurglin' of a brook on a June day down the banks of the Lakes of Killarney." Kelly's advice is often worth taking, for he has been out there well into his second year, and, while he has not yet been wounded, no one ever accused him of lack of courage. He occasionally does things with a slight, almost imperceptible, grimace of pained surprise. But he always does them--when ordered. In my early days I was prone at times to take a peep over the front line parapet at the always interesting No Man's Land. "Oi wouldn't do too much of that if Oi was you, docthor," he said respectfully, though at the time I thought there was also a trace of pity in his brogue, "fer out here it's not considered healthy. Me poor ould father, Lord have mercy on him, always tould me to curb me curiosity. An' a padre who had been here a long toime tould me whin first Oi come that his one bit of advoice to me was, don't be curious." I always encouraged him to carry on with his philosophizing, except when the dull look in his eye and his exaggerated stand-at-attention told me that he had somehow obtained my rum ration as well as his own. "Oi notice, sor, that thim that are here longest peep the laist; that's why they are here longest." "Do you dodge when you hear a shell coming, Kelly?" "It's always woise to duck, sor, fer with very big shells, which come slower, ye may be quick enough to get aginst the soide of the trinch and have the pieces miss ye; an', whin it's a whizz-bang er bullet, if ye're able to duck ye know ye're not hit!"