-were closely packed with an array of tools, and the floor was still more closely packed with a work bench, vise and lathe, spare motor parts, boxes, and half a dozen men. The men were reading newspapers and magazines; one was manipulating the melodeon, and another at the vise was busy with the file. The various occupations ceased abruptly as Courtenay poked his head in and explained briefly who he was and what his troubles were.

"Thought you might be able to do something for me," he concluded, and before he had finished speaking the man at the vise had laid down his file and was reaching down a mackintosh from its hook. Courtenay noticed a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve, and a thick and most unsoldierly crop of hair on his head plastered back from the brow.

"Why sure," the sergeant said. “If she's anyways fixable, you reckon her as fixed. Whereabouts is she ditched?"

Ten minutes later Courtenay was listening disconsolately to the list of damages discovered by the glare of an electric torch and the sergeant's searching examination.

"It'll take 'most a couple of hours to make any sort of a job," said the sergeant. "That bust up fork alone—but we'll put her to rights for you. Let's yank 'er over to the shop."

Courtenay was a good deal put out by this announcement.

"I suppose there's no help for it," he said resignedly, "but it's dashed awkward. I'm due back at the billets now really, and another two or three hours late-whew!"

"Carryin' a message I s'pose," said the sergeant, as together they seized the cycle and pushed it towards the repair lorry.

"No," said Courtenay, "I was over seeing another officer out this way." He had an idea from the sergeant's free and easy style of address that the

mackintosh, without any visible badges and with a very visible spattering of mud, had concealed the fact that he was an officer, and when he reached the light he casually opened his coat to show his belts and tunic. But the sergeant made not the slightest difference in his manner.

"Guess you'd better pull that wet coat right off," he said casually, "and set down while I get busy. You boys, pike out, hit it for the downy, an' get any sleep you all can snatch. That break-down will be ambling along in about three hours an' shoutin' for quick repairs, so you'll have to hustle some. That three hours is about all the sleep comin' to you tonight; so, beat it."

The damaged cycle was lifted into the lorry and propped up on its stand, and before the men had donned their mackintoshes and "beat it," the sergeant was busy dismembering the damaged fork. Courtenay pulled off his wet coat and settled himself comfortably on a box after offering his assistance and being assured it was not required. The sergeant conversed affably as he worked.

At first he addressed Courtenay as "mister," but suddenly-"Say," he remarked, "what ought I to be calling you? I never can remember just what those different stars-an'-stripes fixin's mean."

"My name is Courtenay and I'm second lieutenant," said the other. He was a good deal surprised, for, naturally, a man does not usually reach the rank of sergeant without learning the meaning of the badges of rank on an officer's sleeve.

"My name's Rawbon-Willard K. Rawbon," said the sergeant easily. "So now we know where we are. Will you have a cigar, Loo-tenant?" he went on, slipping a case from his pocket and extending it. Courtenay noticed the solidly expensive get-up and the gold initials on the leather and was still

last into another zigzag one where a step ran along one side, and men muffled in wet coats stood behind a loopholed parapet. Along the trench was a series of tiny shelters scooped out of the bank, built up with sandbags, covered ineffectually with wet shiny waterproof ground-sheets. In these men were crouched over scantily filled braziers, or huddled, curled up like homeless dogs on a doorstep. At intervals along the parapet men watched through periscopes hoisted over the top edge, and every now and then one fired through a loophole. The trench bottom where they walked was anything from ankleto knee-deep in evil-looking watery mud of the consistency of very thin porridge.

The whole scene, the picture

of wet misery, the dirt and squalor and discomfort made Rawbon shiver as much from disgust as from the raw cold that clung about the oozing clay walls and began to bite through to his soaking feet and legs. Courtenay stopped near a group of men, and telling the sergeant to wait there a moment, moved on and left him. A puff of cold wet wind blew over the parapet, and the sergeant wrinkled his nose disgustedly. "Some odorous," he commented to a mudcaked private hunkered down on his heels on the fire-step with his back against the trench wall. "Does the Boche run a glue factory or a fertilizer works around here?"

"The last about fits it," said the private grimly. "They made an attack here about a week back, and there's a tidy few fertilizin' out there now-to say nothin' of some of ours we can't get in."

Rawbon squirmed uneasily to think he should, however unwittingly, have jested about their dead, but nobody there seemed in any way shocked or resentful. The sergeant suddenly remembered his camera, and had thrust his hand under his coat to his pocket when the warning screech of an ap

proaching shell and the example of the other men in the traverse sent him crouching low in the trench bottom. The trench there was almost knee-deep in thin mud, but everyone apparently took that as a matter of course. The shell burst well behind them, but it was followed immediately by about a dozen rounds from a light gun. They came uncomfortably close, crashing overhead and just in front of the parapet. A splinter from one lifted a man's cap from his head and sent it flying. The splinter's whirr and the man's sharp exclamation brought all eyes in his direction. His look of comical surprise and the half-dazed fashion of his lifting a hand to fumble cautiously at his head raised some laughter and a good deal of chaff.

"Orright," he said angrily. "Orright, go on; laugh, dash yer. Fat lot t' laugh at seein' a man's good cap pitched in the mud.”

"No use you feelin' that 'ead o' yours," said his neighbor grinning. "You can't even raise a sick 'eadache out o' that squeak. 'Arf an inch lower now an' you might 'ave 'ad a nice little trip 'ome in an 'orspital ship."

"You're wrong there, Jack," said another solemnly. "That splinter hit fair on top of his nut, an' glanced off. You don't think a pifflin' little PipSqueak shell could go through his head?" He stepped up on the firingstep as he spoke, and on the instant, with a rush and crash, another "Pip-Squeak" struck the parapet immediately in front of him, blowing the top edge off it, filling the air with a volcano of mud, dirt, smoke, and shrieking splinters, and, either from the shock of the explosion or in an attempt to escape it, throwing the man off his balance on the ledge of the firing-step to sprawl full length in the mud. In the swirl of noise and smoke and flying earth Rawbon just glimpsed the plunging fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly

feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing at the pitch of his voice. He paid no attention to the stutter of laughter round him as he retrieved his mud-encrusted rifle, and looked about him for his cap. The laughter rose as he groped in the thin mud for it, still cursing wildly; and then the sergeant noticed that the man who had lost his cap a minute before had quietly snatched up the other one from the firingstep, clapped it on his own head and pretended to help the loser to search.

"It was blame funny, I suppose," Rawbon told the lieutenant a few minutes after, as they moved from the spot. "Him chasin' round in the mud cussin' all blue about his 'blarsted cap'; and t' other fellow wi' the cap on his head and pretending to hunt for it, and callin' the rest to come help. I dessay I'll laugh some myself, if I remember it when I'm safe back about ten mile from here. Just at the moment my funny bone hasn't got goin' right after me expectin' to see that feller blowed to ribbons an' remnants. But them others say, I've seen men sittin' comfortable in an armchair seat at a roof-garden vaudeville that couldn't raise as hearty a laugh at the prize antics of the thousand dollar star comedian, as them fellers riz on that cap episode."

"Well, it was rather funny, you know," said Courtenay, grinning a little himself.

"Mebbe, mebbe," said Rawbon. "But, me-well, if you'll excuse it, I'll keep that laugh in pickle till I feel more like usin' it."

"You wanted to come, you know," said Courtenay. "But I won't blame you if you say you've had enough and head for home. As I told you before, this 'joy-riding' game is rather silly,

It's bad enough us taking risks we have to, but-"

"Yes, you spoke that piece, Lootenant," said Rawbon, "but I want to see all there is on show now I'm here. Only don't expect me to shriek with hilarious mirth every time a shell busts six inches off my nose."

They had halted for a moment, and now another crackling string of light shells burst along the trench.

"There's another bunch o' humor arriving," said Rawbon. "But I don't feel yet like encoring the turn any."

They moved on to a steady accompaniment of shell bursts and Courtenay looked round uneasily.

"I don't half like this," he said. "They don't usually shell us so at this time of day. Hope there's no attack coming."

"I agree with all you say, Lootenant, and then some. Especially about not liking it."

"I'm beginning to think you'd be better off these premises," said Courtenay. "I ought to be with my company if any trouble is coming off. And it might lead to questions and unpleasantness if you were found hereespecially if you're a casualty, or I am."

"Nuff sed, Loo-tenant," said Rawbon promptly. "I don't want that sort o' trouble for various reasons. I'd have an everlastin' job explaining to my dad what I was doin' in the front seats o' the firing line. It wouldn't just fit wi' my bein' a Benevolent Neutral, not anyhow."

"We're only about thirty or forty yards from the Germ trench in this bit," said Courtenay. "Here, carry my periscope, and when I'm talking to some of the men just take a look quietly."

But Rawbon was not able to see much when, a little later, he had a chance to use the periscope. For one thing the short winter day was fading and the light was already poor; for

another any attempt to keep the periscope above the parapet for more than a few seconds brought a series of bullets hissing and zipping over, and periscope glasses in those days were too precious to risk for mere curiosity's sake.

"We'll just have a look at the Frying Pan," said Courtenay, "and then you'll have seen about the lot. We hold a bit of the trench running out beyond the Pan and the Germs are holding the same trench a little further along. We've both got the trench plugged up with sandbag barricades."

They floundered along the twisting trench till it turned sharply to the right and ran out into the shallow hollow of the Frying Pan. It was swimming in greasy mud, and across the far side from where they stood Rawbon could see a breast work of sandbags.

"We call this entrance trench the Handle, and the trench that runs out from behind that barricade the Leak. There's always more or less bombing going on in the Leak, and I don't know if it's very wise of you to go up there. We call this the Frying Pan because -well, 'into the fire,' you know. Will you chance it?"

"Why, sure; if you don't mind, Lootenant," said Rawbon, "I might as well

see

He was interrupted by a sudden crash and roar, running bursts of flaring light, hoarse yells and shouts, and a few rifle shots from somewhere beyond the barricade across the Leak. The work of the next minute was too fast and furious for Rawbon to follow or understand. The uproar beyond the barricade, swelled and clamored and the earth shook to the roar of bursting bombs. In the Frying Pan there was a sudden vision of confused figures, dimly seen through the swirling smoke, swaying and struggling, threshing and splashing in the liquid mud. He was just conscious of Courtenay shouting

something about "Get back," of his being thrust violently back into the wide trench, of two or three figures crowding in after him, cursing and staggering and shooting back into the Frying Pan, of Courtenay's voice shouting again to "Stand clear," of a knot of men scrambling and heaving at something, and then of a deafening "Rattat-tat-tat," and the streaming flashes of a machine-gun. It stopped firing after a minute, and Rawbon, flattened back against a corner of the trench wall, heard an explanation given by a gasping private to Courtenay and another mudbedaubed officer who appeared mysteriously from s mewhere.

"Flung a shower o' bombs an'. rushed us, sir," said the private. "They was over a-top o' us 'fore you could say 'knife.' Only two or three o' us that wasn't downed and was able to get back out o' the Leak an' across the Pan to here."

"We stopped them with the maxim," said Courtenay, "but I suppose they'll rush again in a minute."

He and the other officer conferred hastily. Rawbon caught a few words about "counter-attack" and "quicker the better" and "all the men I can find," and then the other officer moved hurriedly down the trench and men came jostling and crowding to the end of the Handle, just clear of the corner where it turned into the Pan. A few sandbags were pulled down off the parapet and heaped across the end of the trench, the machine-gun was run close up to them and a couple of men posted, one to watch with a periscope, and the other to keep Verey pistol lights flaring into the Frying Pan.

Two minutes later the other officer returned, spoke hastily to Courtenay, and then calling to the men to follow, jumped the low barricade and ran splashing out into the open hollow with the men streaming after him. A burst of rifle fire and the shattering crash of

bombs met them, and continued fiercely for a few minutes after the last of the counter-attacking party had swarmed out. But the attack broke down, never reached the barricade beyond the Pan, was, in fact, cut down almost as fast as it emerged into the open. A handful of men came limping and floundering back, and Courtenay, waiting by the machine-gun in case of another German rush, caught sight of the face of the last man in.

"Rawbon!" he said sharply. "Good Lord, man! I'd forgotten-What took you out there?"

"Say, Loo-tenant," said Rawbon panting hard. "There's no crossin' that mud puddle Fry-Pan. They're holding the barricade 'cross there; got loopholes an' shootin' through 'em. Can't we climb out an' over the open an' on top of 'em?"

"No good," said Courtenay." They're sweeping it with maxims. Listen!"

Up to then Rawbon had heeded nothing above the level of the trench and the hollow, but now he could hear the steady roar of rifle and maxim fire, and the constant whistle of bullets streaming overhead.

"I must rally another crowd and try'n rush it," said Courtenay. "Stand ready with that maxim there. I won't be long."

"I've got a box of bombs here, sir," said a man behind him.

Courtenay turned sharply. “Good,” he said. "But no-it's too far to throw them."

"I think I could just about fetch it, sir," said the man.

"All right," said Courtenay. "Try it while I get some men together."

"Here y' are, chum," said the man, "you light 'em and I'll chuck 'em. This way for the milky coco-nuts!"

Rawbon watched curiously. The bomb was round shaped and rather larger than a cricket ball. A black tube affair an inch or two long proLIVING AGE, VOL. II, No. 100.

jected from it and emitted, when lit, a jet of hissing, spitting sparks. The bomb-thrower seized the missile quickly, stepped clear of the sheltering corner of the trench, threw the bomb, and jumped back under cover. A couple of bullets slapped into the wall of the trench, and next moment the bomb burst.

"Just short," said the thrower, who had peeped out at sound of the report. "Let's 'ave another go."

This time a shower of bullets greeted him as he stepped out, but he hurled his bomb and stepped back in safety. A third he threw, but this time a bullet caught him and he reeled back with blood staining the shoulder of his tunic.

"You'll 'ave to excuse me," he remarked gravely to the man with the match. "Can't stay now. I 'ave an urgent appointment in Blighty.* But I'll drink your 'ealth when I gets to Lunnon."

Rawbon had watched the throwing impatiently. "Look here," he said suddenly. "Just lemme have a whale at this pitching. I'll show 'em some curves that'll dazzle 'em."

The wounded man peered at him and then at his cap badge. "Now 'oo the blank is this?" he demanded. "Blimey, Joe, if 'ere ain't a blooming Universal Plum-an'-Apple Provider. 'Ere, 'oo stole the strawberry jam?”

"You let me in on this ball game," said Rawbon. "Light 'em and pass 'em quick and see me put the Indian sign on that bunch."

A minute later Courtenay came back and stared in amazement at the scene. Two men were lighting and passing up bombs to the sergeant, who, standing clear out in the opening, grabbed and hurled the balls with an extraordinary prancing and dancing and arm-swinging series of contortions, while the crowded trench laughed and applauded.

*England. A soldier's corruption of the Hindustani word "Belati."