just fallen a mile or two off, and that if we liked we could see the
fighting from a garden over the way. It did not take us long to
reach that garden! Soeur Gabrielle showed the way, bouncing up the
stairs of a house across the street, and flying at her heels we came
out on a grassy terrace full of soldiers.

The cannon were booming without a pause, and seemingly so near that
it was bewildering to look out across empty fields at a hillside
that seemed like any other. But luckily somebody had a field-glass,
and with its help a little corner of the battle of Vauquois was
suddenly brought close to us--the rush of French infantry up the
slopes, the feathery drift of French gun-smoke lower down, and, high
up, on the wooded crest along the sky, the red lightnings and white
puffs of the German artillery. Rap, rap, rap, went the answering
guns, as the troops swept up and disappeared into the fire-tongued
wood; and we stood there dumbfounded at the accident of having
stumbled on this visible episode of the great subterranean struggle.

Though Soeur Rosnet had seen too many such sights to be much moved,
she was full of a lively curiosity, and stood beside us, squarely
planted in the mud, holding the field-glass to her eyes, or passing
it laughingly about among the soldiers. But as we turned to go she
said: "They've sent us word to be ready for another four hundred
to-night"; and the twinkle died out of her good eyes.

Her expectations were to be dreadfully surpassed; for, as we learned
a fortnight later from a three column _communique,_ the scene we had
assisted at was no less than the first act of the successful assault
on the high-perched village of Vauquois, a point of the first
importance to the Germans, since it masked their operations to the