They were putting little Boudru to bed--the R.H.A. and the Corps of Royal Engineers and Stansfield, the big fat Infantry Sergeant. His little sister, already tucked up in bed, was nearly asleep. Boudru had been allowed to stay up till Sergeant Stansfield had come in from duty. The special privilege had been accorded to the little French boy on this, the last night that the British troops were to spend in the village. Boudru's home was in a portion of our line in which the defence trenches were of the semi-detached type--they did not join up with the other part of the line, and at times the place was distinctly unhealthy. Sometimes it was in the hands of the Huns, sometimes the British rushed it, and held on for a few weeks; there had been times when it had been occupied by both, at other times it was written on the squared official maps as no man's land. It was a spot in which there was always a feeling of something dreadful being close at hand; there was an air of expectancy about it and one felt there was a marked atmosphere of nerves about. You might be sniped from the house opposite, or blown out of the windows by a seventeen-inch shell. You never know. The man who sold you tobacco the day before might be lying stiff in the gutter next day, or more probably still, he might be dining with the German Staff a mile and a half away. All this uncertainty, coupled with the fact that the place was full of spies, and that valuable information had been finding its way through to the German lines, made the General decide to withdraw his troops and take up some trenches behind it. Boudru sat on the big armchair and swung his white bare legs defiantly. Perhaps it had better be explained that my lord Boudru was five years old. "Boudru going to shut eye?" said the fat infantry sergeant suggestively. "The cots are down and the beds unrolled," said the R.H.A. man falling into the diction of the barrack-room. "No," said Boudru. "You must tell me for the last time the story about the wicked German baby killer who was turned into a pig. The man of the guns must tell it, and the fat man of the infantry shall hide beneath the bed and make pig shrieks--many pig shrieks--at the time when he is killed." "But we shall disturb little sister Elise," said the fat sergeant with visions of a dismal ten minutes wedged beneath the small cot and the floor. "Elise is not bye-o yet," piped a thin voice from where two eyes were sparkling elfishly from a tangle of golden locks. "Go on, my English man--There was once a big fat baby killer who lived in Potsdam ..."