A drizzling rain was falling, the day was close, and a grey mist enveloped everything so that one could see nothing twenty yards beyond the side of the line. In two hours we arrived at Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, and found the line held strongly by infantry and field artillery. We heard that heavy fighting was going on beyond Milosna, and our train crawling on for another twenty miles, we could hear the sounds of the battle ourselves. We were ordered to alight by the side of the line, all the stations having been put into a state of defence and turned into small fortresses. The Staff Officer who posted us happened to be a friend of Lofe's, and he told us that the Germans were making a strong effort to break through to the line for a distance of at least ninety versts; and he believed that fighting was going on at other points as far as Lublin. The troops actually posted on the line were reserves; the fighting was taking place at the passages of the Vistula sixteen versts away. During the night the fog was so thick that one could not see the man standing beside him. We bivouacked by the side of the line, which here was laid on perfectly level ground. The next morning the weather was no better; but when the rain began to fall faster the atmosphere cleared a little, and we were ordered to advance about six versts and dig trenches. We were engaged in this work all day, being assisted by 800 country people, half of whom were women, who displayed the utmost anxiety to help us in resisting a hated enemy, from whose hands many of them had received the deepest insult. We saw nothing of the enemy, but heard the distant sound of battle; and some carts bore a few badly wounded men past us. We were engaged in the work of digging trenches and making emplacements for guns until the 20th, being assisted during this time by the peasantry: and fighting went on continuously at the front. I was anxious to see something of it, but loth to leave the side of Lofe, owing to the difficulty I had in making myself understood by strangers; and after my dispute with the officer at Pultusk I was a little nervous, being afraid I might be seized and sent away. Lofe was a very amiable fellow and I got on well with him, as I did with all the Russians with whom I became well acquainted. Life in the trenches was not to our taste. We applied for permission to go down to the front to witness the fighting, but it was refused. So we had to remain where we were and elaborate our defences. How many hundreds of miles of wire we used in our entanglements I should not like to guess; but if the Germans had ever reached them, I think they would have left a good many dead in front of them. With the barbed wire "crow-nets," as we called them, we intermixed a great many staked pits, and other amiable devices for shortening the days of our enemies.