"But there's others listening, too! If they hear a move, or think that they hear a move, up goes a star shell, bright as day, to show you sprawled on the ground. Your only chance is to lie still, like a dead man. But, lots of times, even if they think you're dead they'll turn a machine-gun on you, just to make sure. You don't have to imitate being dead any more, then. I know of six officers, right in this sector, who have been killed in listening-patrol work, and I couldn't count how many men." He leaned forward and stared out into space gloomily. "I don't call this--war," he said in a lower voice. "I can't call it war when a soldier's chief weapons are a pickax and a spade for digging trenches--and graves. And--I wanted to be an officer!" He stared out upon the faded world and repeated slowly, "I wanted to be an officer! I wanted to lead men into--that!" "You lead men now!" said the boy. The fire of responsibility and pride flashed back into the dull eyes and involuntarily the veteran stood up. "I lead men now," he cried, "and I'll lead them till we drive the Germans back from the last foot of the soil of France!" He strode off to his multifarious duties with swing and determination in his step. It was three days after that when Horace, who was gradually acclimatizing to the nerve-racking cannonade of the battlefield, became conscious that it was steadily increasing in intensity. The clouds hung low, muffling the resonance and emphasizing the sharp reports of the cannon. The moist, sluggish air, full of unimaginable odors, became pungent with sulphur, powder, the burnt smell of calcined soil and the fumes of charred wool arising from the ignited clothing of the unburied dead on No Man's Land. Significant, too, that evening, was the appearance of wagon-loads of wire. One of the men groaned aloud as he saw it, "Zut! That means some dodging of bullets to-night!" Never, till Time has ceased to be, will any man calculate the number of deaths which have been caused by that entrapment born in the brain of some fiend--wire entanglement. Wire! The strangler! Wire! The man-trap! Wire! That grips a soldier with malicious glee and holds him fast to an immediate or a lingering death. Wire! Which lies before every heroic effort, which throws its snaky coils around the feet and around the nerves of the bravest. Embodiment of hate, of diabolic trickery, of malign expectancy, arch-creator of despair--Wire! For every mile of fighting front, there are a thousand miles of wire, with a weight of 110 tons. For every mile of front, 12,000 standards and 12,000 pickets must be used. Withal, that thousand miles of wire has cost a thousand lives to put it up and keep it in repair, that, when the time may come, it may cost the lives of two thousand of the enemy.