unsuspecting battery that has been safely hidden for months. Leaving the guns, we saunter across the wheat-field toward the ridge, the great red ball of the setting sun dazzling our eyes with its aspect of molten steel. On the very crest of the rolling ground is a grove of stunted firs, and through this lies a path to the observation trench which is entered by an approach growing gradually deeper until, cutting through the very ridge, it ends in the observation trench dug out of the earth on the western slope. For the last couple of hundred yards before we enter the approaches, we are in plain view of the German gunners, but we had supposed that at the distance a few men would not be noticed. Evidently, however, our observers in the German line have had their eyes glued on this spot, for we had barely entered the trench when a shell burst down in front of us. The writer was looking through the hyperscope at the time, but imagined that it was at least half a mile away. An instant later came the melancholy wail of another shell over our heads and the report of its explosion half way between us and our motor-car in the road. Behind it came another and another each one getting nearer our trench. The last one passed a few feet over our heads and burst just beyond, covering us in the trench with dust and filling our nostrils with the fumes of gunpowder. Another shortening up of the range might have landed in our delightful retreat, but evidently the Germans became discouraged, for we heard nothing more from them. Through the hyperscopes one could look out over the beautiful sweep of the valley studded with little farms, the homes of which are mostly in ruins. This point from which we were studying the landscape was only 100 yards from our own line of trenches, which lay just in front of and below us, while not more than 75 yards beyond were the line of the German trenches. So clear were they in the field of the hyperscope that one could actually see the loopholes in the ridge of earth. Our own were, of course, open from the back, and one could see the soldiers moving about in their quarters or squatting comfortably against the walls of the trenches. Away to the west were ridges of earth here and there, where our friends of the artillery told us were reserve trenches, while they pointed out groves of trees or ruined villages in which they suspected lurked the German guns. [Illustration: Russian officers in an artillery observation position.]