teemed were good prey, but the soldiers were so nauseated by their meat by now that they seldom took the trouble to set snares.

A squeal, scarcely started before it was stopped, told of some providential soul picking up a pig of the type which had long forgotten its domestication. These were too rare to be overlooked, but First Sergeant Hanley, a tough Scot nominally commanding the Third Regiment, went slipping off on a tangent to reprimand the act.

Mawkey, who had scuttled ahead, came back now, his evil eyes bright with excitement. "They all face south. There are about six officers and a guard of thirty soldiers. The artillery is over to your right in an old field-gun emplacement."

"Gian," whispered the lieutenant to an Italian sergeant with a perpetually hungry look, "take a company and stand ready to squash the gunners between Tou-tou and yourself when he comes up."

"Si," bobbed Gian. "I hope they have rations."

"Who ever heard of a Russian who had anything to eat?" said the lieutenant. "On your way."

Gian was there and then wasn't there. Aside from the distant firing, there was no sound. The battery above had ceased to bellow some time ago, being uncertain of the positions of its own troops.

The lieutenant glanced at the sun and then thrust another stick into the center of a flat place and measured the shadow with the spread of his hand just to be sure. He had three or four minutes left of the half-hour. He pulled down the visor over his face and the men near him did the same. There was a slight snicking sound as weapons were checked.

More slowly now the lieutenant brought them forward. Mawkey, at his side, was trembling with eagerness as he unrolled his favorite weapon—a stick to which was attached three lengths of light chain appended by choicely sharp chunks of shrapnel.

They were almost to the crest now, so flat in the tall grass that they were still invisible to the Russians. The lieutenant checked the sun. He whistled the trill of a meadow lark three times, paused and then whistled it again.

There was a yelp of terror, hacked off short, over by the battery. A second later the grass all about the P.C. erupted with soldiers. A Russian officer emitted a hysterical string of commands and the thirty men whirled about to be drowned in a sea of charging men. Two or three guns 

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