A portly captain, puffing like a porpoise, clambered up with them. From time to time he would stop and take from his hip pocket a brightly colored paper sack of scrap tobacco. Then, with a generous amount in the side of his mouth, he would begin again the ascent. He offered the paper bag to some of the men nearer to him, and they accepted it gratefully, but not cramming their mouths so full as he. The portly captain also invented the fiction that he was a former brewery-wagon driver in St. Louis and that, “By God, he wished he was back on a brewery wagon again.” The men laughed obligingly but hollowly. The platoon reached the summit. Little curls of gray smoke, looking like shadowy question-marks, rose over the plateau in the distance. Beyond was the ridge, perhaps a mile from the brink over which the men were climbing. To the right of the ridge a long, white-sided, red-topped farmhouse rested. To the left the plateau ended in another hill. It was not long after the platoon had arrived on the level ground that machine-guns began pouring a steady stream of lead over the field. Hesitatingly the platoon advanced. The machine-guns were pointing too high. Occasionally a bullet, probably a faulty one, struck the ground beside the slowly advancing line, but without force. The portly captain shifted his wad of tobacco, spat a thin stream, and ordered the platoon to halt. “How many of you men have got shovels?” There were half a dozen shovels and two picks. “All right, you men with shovels. Halt right here and dig a trench as long and as deep as you can. The rest of us—Forward!” Slowly, warily, they set forth again. Now no one spoke, not even the garrulous and confidence-breeding captain. The machine-guns aimed lower, but too low. Only the ricochetting bullets reached the platoon. They advanced until they were half-way to the ridge. Then they discovered that there were Germans much nearer to them than they had supposed. From little humps on the ground rifle bullets pinged past, shaving near the ears of the men. From the hill on the left came a whining serenade of lead. Shots were being fired from every direction but from the rear. The men threw themselves upon the ground, not knowing what to do. After a long wait the firing abated and the platoon started to creep forward. Instantly their movement was met with a hail of bullets. They lay quite still, their uniforms blending with the russet of the grass, on which the sun shone with intense vigor. Hicks, lying at the extreme left of the platoon, was engaged in corralling those words which entered his mind and placing them into two classes—words with an even number of letters, words with an uneven number of letters. He had long held the view that the evenly lettered words were preponderant.