‘That’s your man, nah, Sergeant,’ said one man out of the shadow in a tone that was learned in Rotherham, or very near it. ‘Ah like Captain Volnay as mooch as ah like anybody. He’s got a kind of a way with him an’ he sits dahn with the like of huz, and he talks to us as if we was men in place o’ bein’ cattle, which is the way with most on ‘em. Here’s good luck to Captain Volnay, an’ if ah’d got a glass o’ that steamin’ poonch they’n got in Aberdeen, ode bird, ah’d scald _my_ throat with a relish.’ They were all full of roast pork, or of pork more or less roasted, and the scent of the sacrifice was yet in the air, and their war-bitten souls were cheered and warmed, if ever so little. ‘Yis,’ said one lad, ‘if half the quality knowed!’ ‘Hallo!’ said Polson, turning in the fragrant dark. ‘How far from Bilston were _you_ born?’ ‘Wedgebury,’ said the voice. ‘No furder.’ ‘Beacon Hargate, me,’ said Polson. ‘I’d ha’ guessed it, Sergeant. I’d ha’ guessed it. I niver heerd your voice afore to-night, but there’s a kind of a turn of the tongue in it now and then.’ The contingent fell to silence, and a wet clinging snow began, ruled in straight lines. The embers of the fire hissed under it, and the men drew themselves into such shelter as they could find, and waited in the grey, cold patience for the expected relief from duty. It was long in coming, and they learned afterwards that the regimental Sergeant-major, whose duty it ought to have been to relieve them on that Christmas morning, was dead from dysentery, poor fellow, and as a matter of fact it turned out that he was buried in the muddy earth and half frozen in there before anybody remembered to take up his duty. The long, long night went on, and the Russian gunner, finding his attention no longer drawn to the distant fire, had gone to sleep or anyhow fallen silent, when a witching noise rose upon the air, and all the worn, half-sleeping men sat up to listen. Surely there was the sound of church bells, and there was a rush towards the pleasant noise. It was only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have rung in any village church in old England, two thousand miles away. And the hearts of the listeners rose to their throats, and men were quiet whilst the music sounded. The notes reached far, and fell on many a drowsy ear, conjuring up visions in the half-slumbering minds of humble whitewashed village steeples, far and far away. Polson’s contingent, drawn from a distance of some two hundred yards, stuffed that ingenious musician with half-cold roast pork, and left him well rewarded for his toils.