In a dugout sprawled Top-Sergeant Mahan,--formerly of Uncle Sam's
regular army, playing an uninspiring game of poker with Sergeant
Dale of his company and Sergeant Vivier of the French infantry.
The Frenchman was slow in learning poker's mysteries.

And, anyway, all three men were temporarily penniless and were
forced to play for I.O.U's--which is stupid sport, at best.

So when, from the German line, came a quick sputt-sputt-sputt
from a half-dozen sharpshooters' rifles, all three men looked up
from their desultory game in real interest. Mahan got to his feet
with a grunt.

"Some other fool has been trying to see how far he can rubber
above the sandbags without drawing boche fire," he hazarded,
starting out to investigate. "It's a miracle to me how a boche
bullet can go through heads that are so full of first-quality
ivory as those rubberers'."

But Mahan's strictures were quite unwarranted. The sharpshooters
were not firing at the parapet. Their scattering shots were
flying high, and hitting against the slope of the hill behind the
trenches.

Adown this shell-pocked hillside, as Mahan and the other
disturbed idlers gazed, came cantering a huge dark-brown-and-
white collie. The morning wind stirred the black stippling that
edged his tawny fur, showing the gold-gray undercoat beneath it.
His white chest was like a snowdrift, and offered a fine mark for
the German rifles. A bullet or two sang whiningly past his gayly