It wasn't until I felt some one touch my shoulder that I realised my position. We were sitting, the three of us, in a slanting fashion with our backs to the earthworks of the trench. To our right, under an improvised round roof, a little dried-up man like a bee, with his tunic open at the neck and a beard of some days on his chin, was calling down a telephone. Next to me on the left a smart young officer, of a perfect neatness and even dandiness, was eating his supper, which his servant, crouching in front of him, ladled with a spoon out of a tin can. Beyond him again the soldiers in a long line under the farm wall were sewing their clothes, eating, talking in whispers, and one of them reading a newspaper aloud to himself. A barn opposite us in ruins showed between its bare posts the green fields beyond. Now and then a soldier would move across the yard to the door of the farm, and he seemed to slide with something between walking and running, his shoulders bent, his head down. The sun, low now, showed just above the end of the farm roof and the lines of light were orange between the shadows of the barn. All the batteries seemed now very far away; the only sound in the world was the occasional sigh of the shrapnel. The farmyard was bathed in the peace of the summer evening. The Colonel, when he had finished his conversation with some humorous sally that gave him great pleasure, greeted us. "Very glad to see you, gentlemen.... Two Englishmen! Well, that's the Alliance in very truth ... yes.... How's London, gentlemen? Yes, _golubchik_, that small tin--the grey one. No, _durak_, the _small_ one. Dr. Semyonov sent a message. Pray make yourselves comfortable, but don't raise your heads. They may turn their minds in this direction at any moment again. We've had them once already this afternoon. Eh, Piotr Ivanovitch (this to the smart young officer), that would have made your Ekaterina Petrovna jump in her sleep--ha, ha, ha--oh, yes, but I can see her jumping.... Hullo, telephone--Give it here! That you, Ivan Leontievitch? No ... very well for the moment.... Two Englishmen here sitting in my trench--truth itself! Well, what about the Second 'Rota'? Are they coming down?... _Yeh Bogu_, I don't know! What do you say?..." The young officer, in a very gentle and melodious voice, offered Trenchard, who was sitting next to him, some supper. "One of these cutlets?" Trenchard, blushing and stammering, refused. "A cigarette, then?"