"You remember that gun, Bill," he remarked, lying back in the arm-chair of the farmhouse where we were billeted, and sipping some hot rum--"that German gun that got through in April and bombarded Poperinghe? I want to talk to you about that gun." He started filling his pipe. "'Tis the hardest proposition I've ever been up against, and sure I don't know what to do at all." He was staring at the fire. "You remember the Land Crab and how he told us the woods had been searched? Well, it didn't take a superhuman brainstorm to realise that if what he said was right and the Huns were dressed as Belgian peasants, and the gun was a little one, that a line of men going through the woods had about as much chance of finding them as a terrier has of catching a tadpole in the water. I says to myself, 'Dick, my boy, this is an occasion for stealth, for delicate work, for finesse.' So off I went on my lonesome and hid in the wood. I argued that they couldn't be keeping a permanent watch, and that even if they'd seen me come in, they'd think in time I had gone out again, when they noticed no further sign of me. Also I guessed they didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest about their ears by killing me--they wanted no vulgar glare of publicity upon their doings. So, as I say, I hid in a hole and waited. I got bored stiff; though, when all was said and done, it wasn't much worse than sitting in that blessed ploughed field beside the road. About five o'clock I started cursing myself for a fool in listening to the story at all, it all seemed so ridiculous. Not a sound in the woods, not a breath of wind in the trees. The guns weren't firing, just for the time everything was peaceful. I'd got a caterpillar down my neck, and I was just coming back to get a drink and chuck it up, when suddenly a Belgian labourer popped out from behind a tree. There was nothing peculiar about him, and if it hadn't been for the Land Crab's story I'd never have given him a second thought. He was just picking up sticks, but as I watched him I noticed that every now and then he straightened himself up, and seemed to peer around as if he was searching the undergrowth. The next minute out came another, and he started the stick-picking stunt too." Dick paused to relight his pipe, then he laughed. "Of course, the humour of the situation couldn't help striking me. Dick O'Rourke in a filthy hole, covered with branches and bits of dirt, watching two mangy old Belgians picking up wood. But, having stood it the whole day, I made up my mind to wait, at any rate, till night. If only I could catch the gun in action--even if the odds were too great for me alone--I'd be able to spot the hiding-place, and come back later with a party and round them up.