For it leaked out that, in our recent advance to the Warta, we actually had a large force of Germans on our rear: and it is more than likely that the Cossacks had the principal share in driving them back from several impending attacks, of which we knew nothing at the time; and which would probably have ended in our making the acquaintanceship of a Prussian prison; or a still narrower place of confinement. The rain ceased for a time, and both sides continued to entrench themselves, the Germans in front of us being not more than a mile distant, with their advanced posts much closer. They had contrived to get up heavy guns; and there was a good deal of artillery shooting every day, which blew in trenches, destroyed wire-entanglements, and did lots of other damage, but did not kill many men. Sometimes an enormous shell blew a poor fellow to pieces, sometimes wiped out half-a-dozen at once; but I do not think we lost more than a score a day all along the line. The freaks played by shells were sometimes extraordinary. One went just over the head of an officer, killed a boy who was standing behind him, went over the head of another man, and then sprang high into the air before exploding. It is as impossible to give a probable explanation of such strange action, as it is to say why a fragment of shell bursting fifty yards away should kill three men, while one exploding right in the midst of a group of twenty gunners should leave them all unscathed. It is the law of chance--if chance has laws. I should also mention (though I did not learn the circumstances until some time afterwards) that the Germans had fortified several villages and towns on the left bank of the Vistula, with first, second and third lines of defence; and that the Russians, unable to take these in their general advance, had masked them, and left them on their rear. The garrisons could not have been strong enough to take advantage of this circumstance; but it does not seem to be so dangerous to leave fortresses behind in these latter days of the strange development of war, as it formerly was. Having little to do we amused ourselves, and one another, by repeating, and studying, the various rumours and bits of news we heard. Russian newspapers, of course, and a good many German ones, reached our trenches; and a few French publications; but I never saw an English paper of any kind. Those we obtained were generally illustrated; but the pictures, as far as they related to the Russian seat of war, were mere inventions; and I am afraid the same remark must be made with regard to the news; though some of the papers had a fairly good notion of the general progress of events. It was when they came to details that their novelists got to work.