big, muscular, out-of-doors looking; whistling, he washed his gray
underclothes with the soap the army furnishes, wrung them, and tossed
them over the rose-bushes to dry.

"Does anybody live in this house?"

"Yes, a squad of travailleurs."

A regiment of travailleurs is attached to every secteur of trenches.
These soldiers, depending, I believe, on the Engineer Corps, are
quartered just behind the lines, and go to them every day to put them in
order, repair the roads, and do all the manual labor. Humble folk these,
peasants, ditch-diggers, road-menders, and village carpenters. Those at
Pont-à-Mousson were nearly all fathers of families, and it was one of
the sights of the war most charged with true pathos to see these
gray-haired men marching to the trenches with their shovels on their
shoulders.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Oh, yes. We live very quietly. I, being a stonemason and a carpenter,
stay behind and keep the house in repair. In summer we have our little
vegetable gardens down behind those trees where the Boches can't see
us."

"Can I see the house?"

"Surely; just wait till I have finished sousing these clothes."

The room on the ground floor to the left of the hallway was imposing in