"Near enough--yes, indeed. A communication trench comes right into the cellar. But it is quiet in this part of The Wood. There is a regiment of old Boches in the trenches opposite our territorials, fathers of families (pères de familles), just as they are. We fire rifles at each other from time to time just to remember it is war (c'est la guerre). We share the crest together here; nothing depends on it. What good should we do in killing each other? Besides it would be a waste of shells." "How do you know that the Boches opposite you are old?" "We see them from time to time. They are great hands at a parley. The first thing they tell you is the number of children they have. I met an old Boche not long ago down by the river. He held up two fingers to show that he had two children, put his hand out just above his knee to show the height of his first child, and raised it just above his waist to show the height of the second. So I held up five fingers to show him I had five children, when the Lord knows I have only one. But I did not want to be beaten by a Boche." A sound of voices was heard beneath us, and the clang of the shovels being placed against the stone walls of the cellar. "Those are the travailleurs. The sergeant will be coming in and I must report to him. Good-bye, American friend, and come again." A melancholy dusk was beginning as I turned home from the romantic house, and the deserted streets were filling with purplish shadows. The concussion of exploding shells had blown almost all the glass out of the windows of the Church of St. Laurent, and the few brilliant red and yellow fragments that still clung to the twisted leaden frames reminded me of the autumn leaves that sometimes cling to winter-stricken trees. The interior of the church was swept and garnished, and about twenty candles with golden flames, slowly waving in the drafts from the ruined windows, shone beneath a statue of the Virgin. There was not another soul in the church. A terrible silence fell with the gathering darkness. In a little wicker basket at the foot of the benignant mother were about twenty photographs of soldiers, some in little brassy frames with spots of verdigris on them, some the old-fashioned "cabinet" kind, some on simple post-cards. There was a young, dark Zouave who stood with his hand on an ugly little table, a sergeant of the Engineer Corps with a vacant, uninteresting face, and two young infantry men, brothers, on the same shabby finger-marked post-card. Pious hands had left them thus in the care of the unhappy mother, "Marie, consolatrice des malheureux." The darkness of midnight was beginning at Pont-à-Mousson, for the town was always as black as a pit. On my way home I saw a furtive knife edge of yellow light here and there under a door. The sentry stood by his shuttered lantern. Suddenly the first of the trench lights flowered in the sky over the long dark ridge of the Bois-le-Prétre. Chapter VIII