"Then you think the Boches are going to make a push of their own?"

"I do; and I hope it will be a good fat one. When it comes, I fancy
we shall be able to put up something rather pretty in the way of a
defence. The Salient is stiff with guns--I don't think the Boche
quite realises _how_ stiff! And we owe the swine something!" he added
through his teeth.

There was a pause in the conversation. You cannot hold the Salient for
three months without paying for the distinction; and the regiment had
paid its full share. Not so much in numbers, perhaps, as in quality.
Stray bullets, whistling up and down the trenches, coming even
obliquely from the rear, had exacted most grievous toll. Shells
and trench-mortar bombs, taking us in flank, had extinguished many
valuable lives. At this time nothing but the best seemed to satisfy
the Fates. One day it would be a trusted colour-sergeant, on another a
couple of particularly promising young corporals. Only last week the
Adjutant--athlete, scholar, born soldier, and very lovable schoolboy,
all most perfectly blended--had fallen mortally wounded, on his
morning round of the fire-trenches, by a bullet which came from
nowhere. He was the subject of Wagstaffe's reference.

"Is it not possible," suggested Mr. Waddell, who habitually considered
all questions from every possible point of view, "that this
bombardment has been specially initiated by the German authorities, in
order to impress upon their own troops a warning that there must be no
Christmas truce this year?"

"If that is the Kaiser's Christmas greeting to his loving followers,"