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Staniforth, Ptes. Their second night in the line, in 15 trench, this little party crawled between the two halves of a dead cow, and, scrambling over our wire, explored No Man's Land, returning some half hour later. Others followed their lead, and during the whole of our stay in this sector, though our patrols were out almost every night, they never met a German.

As reserve officers of that remarkable North Russian expeditionary force the writers take off their hats in respect to the citizen soldiers who campaigned with us under conditions that were, truth to say, usually better but sometimes much worse than the trench situation pictured by the cartoon below. With grit and gumption and good humor those citizen soldiers "endured hardness as good soldiers."

Tools were seized, and men began frantically to try and dig themselves deeper into the hard earth, as our trench seemed to give no more protection from the dropping bullets than a saucer would from a storm of rain but it was too late. We could not sink into the earth fast enough.

By the law of natural fitness, Dennie and Trench should have fallen in love with each other. They were so alike in goodness of heart. But such mating of like with like, is rare, and under its ruling the world would grow so monotonously good, on the one hand, and bad, on the other, that life would be uninteresting. During Dr. Fenneben's absence, Professor Burgess was acting-dean.

Cheerfully, as a matter of course, he continued: "We'll go up to the house an' tell Tolliver it's all settled." She lagged back, sulkily, still protesting. "It's not settled, either. You don't run everything." But in her heart she was afraid he had stormed the last trench of her resistance. Bob Dillon was peeling potatoes outside the chuck tent when he heard a whistle he recognized instantly.

This advice being seconded by Ben Trench, Watty Wilkins went aft to the captain, who had just come on deck, touched his cap, and confessed himself. For some moments the captain spoke not a word, but looked at the young culprit with a portentous frown. Then, uttering something like a deep bass growl, he ordered the lad to follow him into his private cabin.

Afterwards they pushed on some distance beyond this trench but found no other to take, and when they fell back on the existing front line the position remained exactly as it had been before the attack, except for the terrible casualties they had so unnecessarily sustained.

They seemed to be nearly perished with the cold and wet, and quite worn out by their cheerless sojourn in the trenches. The trench lay on the slope of a slight hill, the crest being about 200 yards away. The enemy were not close, their position was out of sight and unknown. But to the left Logeast Wood was clearly visible, and the enemy were known to be there.

It had rained most of the night, as indeed it had rained most of the past week or the past month. All night long the men had stood on the firing step of the trench, chilled and miserable in their sodden clothing, and sunk in soft sticky mud over the ankles. All night long they had peeped over the parapet, or fired through the loopholes at the German trench a hundred yards off.

Landing in silence, they carried the victims for sacrifice to the verge of the grove, and Odysseus with his sword dug a trench, a cubit in length and breadth, and poured about it a libation of mead and water and wine. Then the sheep were slaughtered, and the trench was filled to the brim with their blood.