"What?" asked Bob. "Do we get better eats here?"

"Eats, you heathen!" exclaimed Ned. "Can't you forget that once in a while? What are you going to do if the Germans make you a prisoner? They won't feed you at all!"

"Then I won't be a prisoner!" declared Bob. "But what were you going to say about comfort, Jerry?"

"We don't have to drill," was the answer.

And this was true. All the life of the camp was now done away with, even the training camp of France, where the boys had finished their war education, so to speak. But if they did not have to drill there was plenty else to occupy them.

While on duty in the trench they had constantly to be on the alert, and this not to guard against the unexpected approach of some friendly officer, bent on determining how his sentries were performing their duty, but to be on the watch against the approach of a deadly enemy. There must be no sleeping--not even dozing--on post.Then, too, there was work to do. There was food and water to bring up, and firewood to scurry for when the chance offered, for it was not often possible to bring up hot rations to the front lines, and the boys heated their own as best they could, in discarded tin cans with a few twigs for fuel. 

There were lines of trenches to cut, dugouts to repair after they had been blown to bits by the German guns, and there was barbed wire to replace under cover of darkness when it had been severed by the rain of steel and lead from the enemy's guns. 

So the three chums and their comrades found no lack of things to keep them busy in the trenches. They had their hours off, of course, when they were permitted to go back to the dugout, and there, in comparative safety, they might try to sleep. This was not easy, for though in a manner they became used to the constant roaring and blasting of the big guns, there was always an undercurrent of disturbances of other kinds. They were on the firing line, and the enemy did not let them forget it. 

Every day the airplanes went over the lines, and more than once there was a battle in mid-air above where Ned, Bob, and Jerry were on duty. Once a Hun plane came down in flames, so near they could hear the thud as it struck. 

At times, after a period of comparative quiet, the trenches on both sides of No Man's Land would suddenly awaken into life. This would be caused by a fear, either on the part of the 

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