rifle, or scratch his nose; when he goes on he can see no one ahead of him, and the cry 'Not in touch' comes sullenly up to the front. Or you cross the path of another party, burdened as yours. In the dark, or against the flaring skyline, they look like yours, bent, murky shapes with bumps upon them, and some of your men trail off with the other party. And though you pity your men more than yourself, it is difficult sometimes to be gentle with them, difficult not to yield to the intense exasperation of it all, and curse foolishly.... But Harry was good with his men, and they stumbled on, slipping, muttering, with a dull ache at the shoulders and a dogged rage in their hearts. He was trying to steer by the compass, and he was aiming for a point given him on the map, the rendezvous for the party he was to meet. This point was the junction of three trenches, but as all trenches thereabouts had been so blotted out as to be almost indistinguishable from casual shell-holes, it was not so good a rendezvous as it had seemed to the Brigade. However, Harry managed to find it, or believed that he had found it--for in that murk and blackness nothing was certain; if he had found it, the other party had not, for there was no one there. They might be late, they might be lost, they might be waiting elsewhere. So Harry sent out a scout or two and waited, while the men lay down in the muddy ruins of the trench and dozed unhappily. And while they waited, the Boche, who had been flinging big shells about at random since dusk, took it into his head to plaster these old trenches with 5-9's. Harry ran, or floundered along the line, telling the men to lie close where they were. There was indeed nothing else to do, but it gave the men confidence, and none of them melted away. As he ran, a big one burst very near and knocked him flat, but he was untouched; it is marvellous how local the effect of H.E. can be. For about ten minutes they had a bad time, and then it ceased, suddenly.