"Is that what a shell sounds like?" asked Horace curiously. "I thought it was much louder." The master cast a sidewise glance at him. "Have you ever seen a large shell burst?" he asked. "No," responded the boy. "After you do," the old reservist commented, "you will feel differently." Another shell, not quite as near, whistled behind them. "They may hit us!" exclaimed Deschamps, with a nervous laugh, the incredulity in his tone revealing how little he realized his danger, nor the devastation wrought by a modern shell. "Go back, Monroe," said the master, quickening his steps. Horace kept step by step beside him. "You said I might go to the corner," he protested; "it's only a little way further." From over the hill came drifting a smell of acrid smoke. "Do you think I'll see--" began Horace. An earth-shaking detonation cut short his words, and, in the early dusk, the flash and the cauliflower cloud of smoke could be seen arising from the fort. "We're replying," cried the old patriot, elation in his voice. "Wait till they come within range of our 6-inch guns!" A turn of the road brought them within direct sight of Fort Embourg. "Look!" cried the master, "they're going to fire again!" The boys halted. As they looked, from the smoothly-cropped grass mound slowly arose an enormous steel-gray mushroom, like the dream of some goblin multiplied a thousandfold. Then, suddenly, without a sign or sound of warning, this dome belched flame and smoke, rocking the earth around. Then down, down sank the grim gray mushroom, leaving no mark of its presence save the green mound on which, the day before, sheep had been grazing, and the drifting puff of smoke overhead. The exhilaration of the boys dropped. There was something terrible and malign in the slow rising of that goblin dome, in its sudden ferocity and in its noiseless disappearance. "That shell will strike several miles away," the old reservist said, "perhaps where men are now fighting. If so, then you have seen a burden of death, of suffering and of carnage starting on its way. War is a horrible thing, boys, a horrible thing! But," he added sadly, "it is a necessity from which the world will never be free." A hundred yards farther brought them to the cross-roads. "Here you must go back, Monroe." Horace looked wistfully at the quiet road ahead of him, winding peacefully under its green cloud of trees. "I've never been in a war," he said. "I do want to see a little bit of this one!" [Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_ SMOKE, THE HERALD OF DEATH. A 12-inch howitzer behind the British lines on the Somme, smashing the German lines several miles away.] "Count yourself happy," said the old reservist solemnly, "for every hour of your life up to this time that has been free from sight or sound of war. You--" A crash and a flare! A blast of fire struck the boy in the face and all became blank.