The safety of the village had thus become of much significance. While it was too far behind the lines to be in grave danger of enemy raids, yet such danger existed to some extent. Wherefore the presence of the "Here-We-Comes"--for the paradoxical double purpose of "resting up" and of guarding the railway Function. Still, it was better than trench-work; and the "Here-We-Comes" enjoyed it--for a day or so. Then trouble had set in. A group of soldiers were lounging on the stone seat in front of the village estaminet. Being off duty, they were reveling in that popular martial pastime known to the Tommy as "grousing" and to the Yankee doughboy as "airing a grouch." Top-Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army, was haranguing the others. Some listened approvingly, others dissentingly and others not at all. "I tell you," Mahan declared for the fourth time, "somebody's double-crossing us again. There's a leak. And if they don't find out where it is, a whole lot of good men and a million dollars' worth of supplies are liable to spill out through that same leak. It--" "But," argued his crony, old Sergeant Vivier, in his hard-learned English, "but it may all be of a chance, mon vieux. It may, not be the doubled cross,--whatever a doubled cross means,--but the mere chance. Such things often--" "Chance, my grandmother's wall-eyed cat!" snorted Mahan. "Maybe it might have been chance--when this place hadn't been bombed for a month--for a whole flight of boche artillery and airship grenades to cut loose against it the day General Pershing happened to stop here for an hour on his way to Chateau-Thierry. Maybe that was chance--though I know blamed well it wasn't. Maybe it was chance that the place wasn't bombed again till two days ago, when that troop-train had to spend such a lot of time getting shunted at the junction. Maybe it was chance that the church, over across the street, hadn't been touched since the last drive, till our regiment's wounded were put in it--and that it's been hit three times since then. Maybe any one of those things--and of a dozen others was chance. But it's a cinch that ALL of them weren't chance. Chance doesn't work that way. I--" "Perhaps," doubtfully assented old Vivier, "perhaps. But I little like to believe it. For it means a spy. And a spy in one's midst is like to a snake in one's blankets. It is a not pleasing comrade. And it stands in sore need of killing."