The air was all heavy with resinous scent, and the carpet beneath soft with moss and leaves and fragrant slips of pine.  Here and there, on a definite plan, a small tree had been spared, and when he joined the men ahead, Peter learned how careful were the French in all this apparently wholesale felling.  In the forest, as they saw as they reached it, the lines were numbered and lettered and in some distant office every woodland group was known with its place and age.  There are few foresters like the French, and it was cheering to think that this great levelling would, in a score of years, do more good than harm.

Slowly biting into the untouched regiments of trees were the men, helped in their work by a small power engine.  The great trunks were lopped and roughly squared here, and then dragged by motor traction to a slide, which they now went to view.  It was a fascinating sight.  The forest ended abruptly on a high hill, and below, at their feet, wound the river.  Far down, working on a wharf that had been constructed of piles driven into the mud, was a Belgian detachment with German prisoners, and near the wharf rough sheds housed the cutting plant.  Where they stood was the head of a big slide, with back-up sides, and the forest giants, brought to the top from the place where they were felled, were levered over, to swish down in a cloud of dust to the waiting men beneath.

“Well, skipper, what about the firewood?” asked Harold as they stood gazing.

“How much do you want?” asked the O.C.  Forestry.

“Oh, well, what can you let me have?  You’ve got stacks of odd stuff about; surely you can spare a bit.”

“It’s clean agin regulations, but could you send for it?”

“Rather!  There’s an A.S.C. camp below us, and the men there promised me a lorry if I’d share the spoils with them.  Will that do?”

“All right.  When will you send up?”

“What’s to-day?  Wednesday?  How about Sunday?  I could put some boys on to load up who’d like the jaunt.  How would Sunday do?”

“Capital.  My chaps work on all day, of course, and I don’t want to give them extra, so send some of yours.”

Peter listened, and now cut in.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I was told I ought to try and get a service of some sort out here.  Could I come out on the lorry and hold one?”

“Delighted, padre, of course.  I’ll see what I can do for you.  About eleven?  Probably you won’t get many men as there are usually inspection parades and some extra fatigues on Sunday, but I’ll put it in orders.  We haven’t had a padre for a long time.”

“Eleven would suit me,” said Peter, “if Captain Harold thinks the lorry can get up here by that time.  Will it, sir?”

“Oh, I should think so, and, anyway, an hour or so won’t make much difference.  If I can, I’ll come with you myself.  But, I say, we ought to be getting back now.  It will be infernally late for luncheon.”