life come into such close contact with a wheelbarrow. In the camp he has the reputation of being gay, careless, full of spirits. He is a wag who brings a smile on faces that are aged and tortured by suffering. But there, on fatigue, he has an air of not knowing any one and only being interested in his work. But look! There he is coming back with his hands empty. Some kind and charitable companion has undertaken to bring back his wheelbarrow. Many times in the course of the day he is seen to come back with arms idle and his expression pensive. No one pays attention to him. But, sentinels, you make a mistake in trusting this young man as you do. With all his simple looks he is playing tricks on the German Empire, the all-powerful Kaiser and the fierce black eagle; tricks worthy of being hanged for! This is his stratagem. To the extreme edge of the platform that hangs over the hole he pushes his wheelbarrow, makes sure that he is not observed by any one, and bang!--in a moment, with a skill that one would not have expected from a person so puny and awkward, he hurls into space barrow and all! Three times, four times, five times, as opportunities occur, he repeats this little game, and then goes off slowly, with the assured step of a good workman at peace with his conscience, to seek another wheelbarrow in the shed, which will soon meet the fate of its predecessors. Thanks to him the number of barrows diminishes rapidly. One day an inventory will show the disappearance of twenty or thirty of them. Where can they be? They are marked with the imperial arms and cannot have been stolen! Puzzle! It is a devil’s trick that no one can explain. A stricter watch reveals nothing. The land has indeed been levelled for several days, and the sheds are already covering that cemetery of wheelbarrows. I know, however, a certain delicate-looking Frenchman, of innocent aspect, who could teach much to the officer of many stars in charge of the supplies. Let the Boche rack his brains, let him be plunged in despair--the Frenchman will not speak and the authorities will only lose their time. In the evening, on returning from work, our wag will say to himself, rubbing his hands with the satisfaction which is the right of a conscientious worker, “To-day I have given five wheelbarrows to France”; for it is quite just to say that what one has taken from Germany has been given to France.