The cold, however, had increased enough to cause much discomfort. It was always cold, and especially so when there was a fierce wind and the rain drenched us. It was the common thing for the men to be up to their knees in water and slush. We had been almost two weeks in this position when we noticed queer happenings in a farm house a few hundred yards behind our lines. The watchfulness of our officers revealed the significance of some apparently trifling things. In the daytime, the shade on a window facing the German line would frequently be moved. Sometimes it would be drawn the full length of the window; then, if the German artillery had been pounding away at our right flank, immediately it would switch in the direction of our batteries. Sometimes the shade would be only half way down. More than once I saw a woman at this same window; and sometimes she would be leading a cow about some distance behind our lines. At night a light would be seen now and again moving past the window. Agents of the British Intelligence Department, summoned to the front by our officers, discovered that a complete system of signalling was carried on between the people in the isolated farm house and the Germans. Three men and a woman were marched out of the house and taken away. After that, our concealed batteries, in new positions, hadn't a single casualty for days, whereas, previously, they had been almost constantly under heavy and accurate fire! During the few days following the "white flag" affair, when the boches' shelling was not quite so steady, we passed our time playing cards. Occasionally one of the fellows, who had split a piece of wood at one end, would insert a card in it and hold it over the parapet. Nine times out of ten a German sniper--there were many of them in the vicinity--would put a hole in it with a bullet. These snipers caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly when we wanted water, which was procurable only at a little brook on our left flank. To get it was such a risky proposition that there were no "detail parties" formed in the daytime, and any one who went in quest of it, did so at his own risk. Many a one who did so venture paid for his daring with his life. The snipers were always busy, even at night, and seemed to have a line on this spot. A few of the fellows, rather than risk going to the brook, filled their water bottles from a duck pond--full of a dirty, green, slimy liquid--situated behind our line. The result was sickness to most of those that drank it and nearly all had to be sent to hospital.