The C.O. smiled soothingly. "My dear Wilson," he said to the Major, "I don't think it could have been one of our men. They have been warned so often. What do you say, Richards?" he asked the Adjutant. "Well, sir, I'm not sure. I saw that young fellow Smith with some wire about half an hour ago, but I don't expect he did it. I'll send for him to make sure." Second Lieutenant Archibald Smith certainly looked harmless enough. He was thin and freckled, and his big blue eyes gazed appealingly through his glasses. "Where did you get that wire you had just now?" asked the Adjutant. Smith beamed. "I got it just behind the wood, sir. There's a lot of old wi ..." but the Major interrupted him. "That's the place," he cried excitedly. "Well, what the devil did you go cutting my wire for?" Archibald Smith looked at him in alarmed fascination. "I didn't think it was any good, sir. I wa-wanted some string, and...." "What did you want string for? Were you going to hang yourself to the roof of your dug-out?" "No, sir. I wanted to wrap up a p-parcel to send home, sir. I wa-anted to send back some socks and underclothes to be darned. I'm very sorry, sir." "Sorry? Sorry be damned, and your underclothes too!" And the Battery Major, who had more bad language at his disposal than most men in the Army, for once forgot he was in the presence of a senior officer. * * * * * While the Major, his subaltern, and three men with a roll of wire wended their sorry way back to the battery, Archibald Smith, surprised and hurt, sat in his dug-out, amusing himself by making fierce bayonet thrusts at his parcel, and alternately wishing it were the Major or himself. XXIV THE NIGHTLY ROUND I swear, and rub my eyes. "Dusk, sir," says the Sergeant-Major with a smile of comprehension, and he lets fall the waterproof sheet which acts as a door to my dug-out. I yawn prodigiously, get up slowly from my bed--one of two banks of earth that run parallel down each side of my muddy hovel, rather after the fashion of seats down each side of an omnibus--and go out into the trench, along which the command "Stand to arms" has just been passed. The men leave their letters and their newspapers; Private Webb, who earned his living in times of peace by drawing thin, elongated ladies in varying stages of undress for fashion catalogues, puts aside his portrait of the Sergeant, who is still smiling with ecstasy at a tin of chloride of lime; the obstinate sleepers are roused, to a great flow of bad language, and all stand to their arms in the possibility of an attack.