haze blurred the world's sharper outlines. By six a blanket-fog
rolled in, and the air was wetly unbreatheable. The fog lay so
thick over the soggy earth that objects ten feet away were
invisible.

"This," commented Sergeant Mahan, "is one of the times I was
talking about this morning--when eyes are no use. This is sure
the country for fogs, in war-time. The cockneys tell me the
London fogs aren't a patch on 'em."

The "Here-We-Comes" were encamped, for the while, at the edge of
a sector from whence all military importance had recently been
removed by a convulsive twist of a hundred-mile battle-front. In
this dull hole-in-a-corner the new-arrived rivets were in process
of welding into the more veteran structure of the mixed regiment.

Not a quarter-mile away--across No Man's Land and athwart two
barriers of barbed wire--lay a series of German trenches. Now, in
all probability, and from all outward signs, the occupants of
this boche position consisted only of a regiment or two which had
been so badly cut up, in a foiled drive, as to need a month of
non-exciting routine before going back into more perilous
service.

Yet the commander of the division to which the "Here-We-Comes"
were attached did not trust to probabilities nor to outward
signs. He had been at the front long enough to realize that the
only thing likely to happen was the thing which seemed
unlikeliest. And he felt a morbid curiosity to learn more about
the personnel of those dormant German trenches.