Kentucky and Pug and their fellow Stonewalls fell to work energetically, their movements hastened by a galling rifle or machine-gun fire that came pelting along their trench from somewhere far out on the flank, and reaching the trench almost in enfilade, and by the warning screech and crash of some shells bursting over them. The rain had ceased a few hours before, but the trench was still sopping wet and thick with sticky mud. It was badly battered and broken down, and was little more for the most part than an irregular and shallow ditch half filled with shattered timbers, fallen earth, full and burst sandbags. Here and there were stretches of comparatively uninjured trench, deep and strongly built, but even in these, sandbags had been burst or blown out of place by shell explosions, and the walls were crumbling and shaken and tottery. The Stonewalls put in a very strenuous hour digging, refilling sandbags, piling them up, putting the trench into some sort of shape to afford cover and protection against shell and rifle fire. There was no sun, but the air was close and heavy and stagnant, and the men dripped perspiration as they worked. Their efforts began to slacken despite the urgings of the officers and non-coms., but they speeded up again as a heavier squall of shell fire shrieked up and began to burst rapidly about and above the trench. “I was beginnin’ to think this trench was good enough for anythin’, and that we’d done diggin’ enough,” panted Pug, heaving a half-split sandbag into place, flattening it down with the blows of a broken pick-handle, and halting a moment to lift his shrapnel helmet to the back of his head and wipe a dirty sleeve across his wet forehead. “But I can see that it might be made a heap safer yet.” “There’s a plenty room for improvement,” agreed Kentucky, wrenching and hauling at a jumble of stakes and barbed wire that had been blown in and half buried in the trench bottom. When he had freed the tangle, he was commencing to thrust and throw it out over the back of the trench when an officer passing along stopped him. “Chuck it out in front, man alive,” he said. “We don’t want to check our side getting in here to help us, and it’s quite on the cards we may need it to help hold back the Boche presently. We’re expecting a counter-attack, you know.” “_Do_ we know?” said Pug, disgustedly, when the officer had passed along. “Mebbe you do, but I’m blowed if I know anythink about it. All I know I could put in me eye an’ then not know it was there even.” “I wish I knew where Larry is, or what’s happened to him,” said Kentucky. “I’m some worried about him.”