At six o'clock Heints came back. He was as fresh as a daisy and as happy as a lad just arrived "out to old Aunt Mary's." It was with a pang of regret that I surrendered the place to him. It was not easy to go away. Always I shall remember that dark place and treasure my recollections of it. May all the men I knew there come safely home! It was a long jaunt back. In one village we passed through, the clock in the church tower had stopped at 4.30 P.M., when the first shell hit it; in another at 2.25 P.M. Both had been silenced in the early days of stern fighting before Toul. When will they start again? Ah, no! that is not the question. "How soon shall the power that turned back the clock of civilization be stopped?"--that is the question. That question America is answering with her treasure and with the best of her breed. By a long line of trucks and wagons we ran,--two hundred of them,--ready to go on in under cover of darkness. In another place fifty-seven ambulances were ready for quick action, and by them a hundred fresh artillery horses were watering. That night I slept again in the house by the cathedral. I dreamed of muddy men and bursting shells, of scampering rats and a phonograph, and I awoke--disappointed. CHAPTER VII "_HE'S A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS_" With a wild clatter a twelve-foot section of the ceiling came down. We sat up in our bunks and waited. It occurred to me that no shell had exploded _above_, _within_, or immediately _about_ the "hut," and that this interruption of our peaceful slumbers must be due to the vibrations from our own batteries; there was consolation in the thought. But I did not fall asleep again. Our guns were going on at a terrific rate now. It was no ordinary shelling of enemy objectives, no mere following of a regular schedule by which "big ones" and "little ones" are dropped on military roads, headquarters, and concentration-points in "Germany." Pest, secretary in charge of the "hut," who in happier times is physical director of the Young Men's Christian Association in Newark, N. J., said: "Something doing. That's a barrage; wonder whether they're coming across or whether we are going over. The first brigade is due for relief to-day; guess the Hun knows it, and is 'speeding the departing guest.' We'll sure have company for breakfast if our fellows keep on stirring up the animals." Presently the "company" arrived. First the gas-alarm was given, and we hurried into our masks. I kept on my waterproof, so that my friends would not see my _knees in action_! Then the shrapnel began to spray, and high explosives felt out our guns. The throaty roar of our seventy-fives mingled with the longer and nearly double shocks of enemy explosions. We knew that "William" would not waste shells on us; but we knew, too, that we were desperately near the places he was trying to find, and that even modern military science is not _always_ exact.