Colonel Graham is a comparatively new arrival among us, but we are children in his sight when it comes to experience of actual fighting. Our own commander has gone home sick, and Colonel Graham reigns in his stead. He is a regular of the old school. Soldiering is the breath of his nostrils, and the Army is his father and mother. He has been over here more than twelve months, and has seen much service with our Allies farther north. Behold him in his headquarters, lately the property of some German gentlemen compelled for business reasons to move farther east—thick-set, hard as nails, and twinkling humorously through his spectacles upon his battle-stained disciples. Most of our friends are present—but not all. Jim Nichols is there; so is Major Floyd, who has no particular call to be there at all, for we are within a few hundred yards of the German front line, and we are to attack at dawn. It is now nearly four o’clock in the morning. Another transient visitor is present—a young officer of the Air Service, by name Harvey Blane. His present duty is to maintain connection between the forces on the ground and the forces of the air. He has come into the line to-night in order to inform the Colonel of the arrangements concluded between the Artillery and the aeroplanes for the protection of the Infantry in the coming attack. Aviators do not vary much as a class. They are all incredibly young; they are all endowed with the undefinable but clear-cut individuality which comes to earth-dwellers who have learned to maintain themselves in some other element—sailors possess it in similar degree—and they are all intensely reticent in the presence of laymen about their experiences in the air. Such an one was young Harvey Blane. There was a full muster of officers in the crowded dugout, for the Colonel was outlining the morrow’s operations, and pencils were busy. But Major Powers, that wise and kindly Ulysses, was not there. He was lying in one of a cluster of newly made American graves at the back of the wood which he had helped to capture. Neither was Boone Cruttenden. CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE ELEVENTH HOUR The Colonel was speaking. “Now listen to what the Intelligence Report has to say about the enemy’s defensive arrangements.