Archie is very much like a dog, his bark is worse than his bite--until he has bitten! His motto is “persevere,” and in the long run he meets with some success. Halcyon days, when he wags his metaphorical tail and the official communiqués pat him on the head. He does not like other dogs, bigger dogs, to bark at him. They quite drown his own bark, so that it is useless to bark back, and their highly explosive nature forces him to put his tail between his legs and run for it, like a chow pursued by a mastiff. No common-sense Archie stops in any place long after the five-nines and the H.E. shrapnel begin to burst around it. In that case discretion is indubitably the better part of valour. Aeroplanes have a nasty habit of “spotting” Archies, whereby they even up old scores and prove their superiority. For even the lordly aeroplane does not charge an Archie barrage by preference. It is when the planes come out in force, a score at a time, that poor Archibald has a rough time, and, so to speak, scratches his ear desperately with his hind leg. The planes do not come in serried mass, but, wheeling this way and that, diving off here and down yonder, so confuse poor Archie that he even stops barking at all, wondering which one he ought to bark at first! By this time most of the planes have sidled gracefully out of range, rounded up and driven down the iron-cross birds, and, having dropped their “cartes de visite” at the rail-head, are returning by ways that are swift and various to the place whence they came. All of which is most unsettling to the soul of Archibald. In the evening, when the west is pink and gold, Archie’s eyes grow wearied. He sees dimly many aeroplanes, here and there, going and coming, and he _has_ been known to bark at the wrong one! Wherefore the homing aeroplane drops a star-signal very often to let him know that all is well, and that no German hawks menace the safety of the land over which he is the “ethereal” guardian, in theory, if not always in practice. At night Archie slumbers profoundly. But the birds of the air do not always sleep. Many a night one hears the throb and hum of a machine crossing the line, and because Archie is asleep we pay him unconscious tribute: “Is it ours, or theirs?” Once, not a mile from the front line, Archie dreamed he saw a Zeppelin. He awoke, stood to, and pointed his nose straight up in the air. Far above him, many thousands of feet aloft, a silvery, menacing sphere hung in the rays of the searchlights. And he barked his loudest and longest, but without avail, for the distance was too great. And the imaginative French folk heaped unintentional infamy upon him when they spoke quite placidly of “Archie baying at the moon!” STIRRING TIMES At the corner of the Grande Route de Bapaume near the square, stands the little old Estaminet of La Veuve Matifas.