undeceived! So, as if at a moment arranged, we wake up.

"It's all my eye--they've done it on us too often. Wait before
believing--and don't count a crumb's worth on it."

We reoccupy our corner. Here and there a man bears in his hand the
light momentous burden of a letter.

"Ah," says Tirloir, "I must be writing. Can't go eight days without
writing."

"Me too," says Eudore, "I must write to my p'tit' femme."

"Is she all right, Mariette?"

"Oui, oui, don't fret about Mariette."

A few have already settled themselves for correspondence. Barque is
standing up. He stoops over a sheet of paper flattened on a
note-book upon a jutting crag in the trench wall. Apparently in the
grip of an inspiration, he writes on and on, with his eyes in
bondage and the concentrated expression of a horseman at full
gallop.

When once Lamuse--who lacks imagination--has sat down, placed his
little writing-block on the padded summit of his knees, and
moistened his copying-ink pencil, he passes the time in reading
again the last letters received, in wondering what he can say that
he has not already said, and in fostering a grim determination to
say something else.