have reassured him, for he stopped and after some hesitation looked at me and saluted again. "Souvenir, monsieur!" he blurted out at last. "Souvenir?" said I, "Quelle espèce de souvenir désirez-vous?" With a grin that threatened to sever the top of his head from the rest of his body, he replied, "Souvenir de bully-beef, monsieur!" He got it. The flies that marred the soothing ointment of this position were certain mysterious bullets that flew about at strange hours of the night and day. Nobody was ever actually hit, but people strolling about between the guns heard a whirr overhead that made then duck involuntarily, and heated officers would dash into the mess swearing that they had seen bullets flatten themselves against brick walls within an inch of their noses. Scepticism, or even a suggestion that they were spent bullets from the firing line, was treated as insubordination. A sniper it must be, a snark who crept into our lines, shot his bolt, then softly and silently vanished away. One evening the combined patience of the battery could bear it no longer--I think somebody had staggered into the mess in a condition of collapse, and upon being revived with a rum ration, proceeded to explain how his cigarette had been shot out of his mouth by a bullet that passed between his teeth. At all events, it was decided to inform the French and request them to take steps to abate the nuisance. They, in the expressive jargon of the day, were all over it. Parties of men from their lines and our own crept out in the dusk to hunt the sniper--what a glorious opportunity of winning fame by returning with his scalp, or one of his ears, or whatever part of a sniper one does bring back as a trophy! Dozens of parties, each more subtle than the other in their proposed methods of action, crept out in the rapidly-falling dusk, and with them the greater number of our officers, armed with looted rifles and more subtlety than all the rest of the parties put together. Then night fell dark and moonless, and the fun began. Each party, busily engaged in its own game of blind-man's-buff, caught sight of some other party, and opened a hot and furious fire upon them. The remaining parties, seeing the flashes, emptied their magazines in their direction. By an hour or so after dark, the battle was in full swing. At ten o'clock such of the battery as were not engaged in the chase were cowering in their dug-outs and there was not a whole pane of glass for miles around. At half-past ten, a telephonist going to the O.P. to relieve his comrade was forced to take shelter in a disused communication trench, and to remain there all night, any attempt on his part to climb out being met by rapid fire from every direction at once. At eleven, a mitrailleuse was dragged up by an excited knot of men, and opened fire in the direction from which there seemed to come most noise. At half-past, fire had become general all along the line, everybody, supposing that his neighbour knew what he was