mud-caked private hunkered down on his heels on the fire-step with his
back against the trench wall. "Does, the Boche run a glue factory or a
fertilizer works around here?"

"The last about fits it," said the private grimly. "They made an attack
here about a week back, and there's a tidy few fertilizin' out there
now--to say nothin' of some of ours we can't get in."

Rawbon squirmed uneasily to think he should, however unwittingly, have
jested about their dead, but nobody there seemed in any way shocked or
resentful. The sergeant suddenly remembered his camera, and had thrust
his hand under his coat to his pocket when the warning screech of an
approaching shell and the example of the other men in the traverse sent
him crouching low in the trench bottom. The trench there was almost
knee-deep in thin mud, but everyone apparently took that as a matter of
course. The shell burst well behind them, but it was followed
immediately by about a dozen rounds from a light gun. They came
uncomfortably close, crashing overhead and just in front of the
parapet. A splinter from one lifted a man's cap from his head and sent
it flying. The splinter's whirr and the man's sharp exclamation brought
all eyes in his direction. His look of comical surprise and the
half-dazed fashion of his lifting a hand to fumble cautiously at his
head raised some laughter and a good deal of chaff.

"Orright," he said angrily. "Orright, go on; laugh, dash yer. Fat lot
t' laugh at, seein' a man's good cap pitched in the mud."

"No use you feelin' that 'ead o' yours," said his neighbor, grinning.
"You can't even raise a sick 'eadache out o' that squeak. 'Arf an inch
lower now an' you might 'ave 'ad a nice little trip 'ome in an