A fine rain, very chilling, began to fall, and got less fine as time went on. The wind rose a bit, too, and drove the rain in gusts in our faces. By good luck it was coming from the Boche trenches. At half-past ten they sent over ten or twelve whizz-bangs, all of which landed in rear of our old front line, except two that hit its parapet. Rifle fire was a little less desultory now, but nothing to write home about. They gave us an occasional belt or two from their machine-guns, but our men were lying flat, and the diggers were below ground, so there was nothing to worry about in that. By half-past eleven I confess I was feeling deuced tired. One had been creeping up and down the line for over five hours, you know; but it wasn't that. One spends vitality; it somehow oozes out of you on such a job. I never wanted anything in my life so much as I wanted to get my half-Company through that job without casualties. And there was one thing I wanted even more than that--to make absolutely certain that no prowling Boche patrol got through my bit of the line. Down on our flank at The Gut there were half a dozen little bombing shows between six and midnight, and one bigger scrap, when the Hun exploded a mine and made a good try to occupy its crater, but, as we learned next day, was hammered out of it after some pretty savage hand-to-hand work. Farther away on the other flank the Boche artillery was unusually busy, and, at intervals, sent over bursts of heavy stuff, the opening salvoes of which rather jangled one's nerves. You see, "A" Company could have been extinguished in a very few minutes had Boche known enough to go about it in the right way. If only one enterprising Boche, working on his own--a sniper, anybody,--without getting through our line just gets near enough to make out that it is a line, and then gets back to his own trenches, our little game will be up, I thought. It wasn't restful. The men were getting pretty stiff, as you may guess, lying still in the wet hour after hour. At half-past two "the Peacemaker" came along and whispered to me to take my men in: "Finished for to-night." I wasn't sorry. I put my senior Sergeant on to lead, and myself brought up the rear. I was, of course, the last to get into Stinking Sap, and my Platoon Sergeant was waiting for me there to tell me that not one of our men had a scratch, nor yet a single man of "C" Company. One man of No. 3 Platoon, in "the Peacemaker's" half-Company, had a bullet through his shoulder; a Blighty, and no more. And that was our record. But, look here, I absolutely must stop and censor some of the Platoon's letters before turning in. I'll write again as soon as ever I can and tell you the rest of it. But--a trench nearly 800 yards long, wire entanglements in front--casualties, one man wounded! Nobody felt much happier about it than your "_Temporary Gentleman_." A GREAT NIGHT'S WORK