During another of these journeys of exploration, one of our officers was in the front line trenches, which had recently been slightly pushed forward, engaged in marking them in on his map. The trenches were newly dug and not yet finished, and the enemy, knowing this, kept up a slow but fairly steady rain of shrapnel upon them. As my friend was making his way along the trench, he saw a brigadier and his entourage advancing in the opposite direction towards him. Having an instinctive mistrust of "brass-hats" and of the inane questions that they are so fond of asking, he stopped where he was, hoping that they would pass by without noticing him. But the fates were against him. When not more than twenty yards separated him from the splendid company, a shell burst fairly in the trench not a couple of yards from the brigadier himself, damaging neither him nor his staff, but unfortunately killing one of the defenders. Almost at the same moment one of the lynx-eyed suite discovered my friend's presence and also the fact that he was an artillery officer. "Just the man we want! Order your battery to open fire at once on the gun that fired that shot." To the average staff officer politeness is a sign of weakness, nothing but a peremptory order is possible from one of such high mental attainments. My friend explained with some asperity that he was not in communication with his battery, being merely on a reconnaissance for the purpose of discovering information that the Staff had neglected to render, information that was of vital importance, namely the position of our own trenches. But that if he would be good enough to inform him of the exact position of the offending battery, he would walk back and open fire upon it. Then all the members of the entourage--the brigadier himself maintained an amused silence throughout--pointed in different directions, each swearing that they had seen the flash of the gun in the place he indicated, some of them displaying a happy ignorance by selecting places well within our own lines. My friend was to take a compass bearing of the direction, he was to stand where the shell fell and wait for the next flash (not a bad idea that), they themselves would get into touch with the artillery group through their own telephone system. Finally they drifted on, still, like the heathen, furiously raging together. My friend forgot all about them in the course of investigating more important matters, until he arrived that evening at the office of his group commander to report upon his observations. He was greeted with the words, "Hullo, what have you been up to?" "Nothing particularly heinous, I hope, sir." "What did you tell that parcel of lunatics to ring me up and request me to open fire on nothing for?" "I didn't, sir," and then the whole story came out, much to the amusement of the group commander. Nor did this close the incident by any means. Somebody having decided that the battery that