of a clock striking, and continue the greater part of the day, rocking the deserted town with its clamor.  Hearing it, the soldiers en repos would say, talking of The Wood, “It sings (ca chante),” or, “It knocks (ca tape) up there to-day.”  The smoke of the bursting shells hung over The Wood in a darkish, gray-blue fog.  But since The Wood had a personality for us, many would say simply, “Listen to The Wood.”

The shell expresses one idea—­energy.  The cylinder of iron, piercing the air at a terrific speed, sings a song of swift, appalling energy, of which the final explosion is the only fitting culmination.  One gets, too, an idea of an unbending volition in the thing.  After a certain time at the front the ear learns to distinguish the sound of a big shell from a small shell, and to know roughly whether or not one is in the danger zone.  It was a grim jest with us that it took ten days to qualify as a shell expert, and at the end of two weeks all those who qualified attended the funeral of those who had failed.  Life at The Wood had an interesting uncertainty.

A quarter of a mile beyond the corner, on the slope of Puvenelle opposite The Wood, stood Montauville, the last habitable village of the region.  To the south of it rose the wooded slopes of Puvenelle; to the north, seen across a marshy meadow, were the slope and the ridge of the Bois-le-Pretre.  The dirty, mud-spattered village was caught between the leathery sweeps of two wooded ridges.  Three winding roads, tramped into a pie of mire, crossed the grassy slope of The Wood, and disappeared into the trees at the top.  Though less than a mile from the first German line, the village, because of its protection from shells by a spur of the Bois-le-Pretre, was in remarkably good condition; the only building to show conspicuous damage being the church, whose steeple had been twice struck.  It was curious to see pigeons flying in and out of the belfry through the shell rents in the roof.  Here and there, among the uncultivated fields of those who had fled, were the green fields of some one who had stayed.  A woman of seventy still kept open her grocery shop; it was extraordinarily dirty, full of buzzing flies, and smelled of spilled wine.

“Why did you stay?” I asked her.

“Because I did not want to leave the village.  Of course my daughter wanted me to come to Dijon.  Imagine me in Dijon, I, who have been to Nancy only once!  A fine figure I should make in Dijon in my sabots!”

“And you are not afraid of the shells?”

“Oh, I should be afraid of them if I ever went out in the street.  But I never leave my shop.”