After a long tramp in this communication trench they made a sharp turn to the right, and entered that which they were going to hold for the next forty-eight hours.  Here they relieved the regiment that had occupied it till now, who filed out as they came in.  Along it at intervals were excavations dug out in the side, some propped up with boards and posts, others, where the ground was of sufficiently holding character, just scooped out.  In front, towards the German lines ran a parapet of excavated earth, with occasional peep-holes bored in it, so that the sentry going his rounds could look out and see if there was any sign of movement from opposite without showing his head above the entrenchment.  But even this was a matter of some risk, since the enemy had located these peep-holes, and from time to time fired a shot from a fixed rifle that came straight through them and buried its bullet in the hinder wall of the trench.  Other spy-holes were therefore being made, but these were not yet finished, and for the present till they were dug, it was necessary to use the old ones.  The trench, like all the others, was excavated in short, zigzag lengths, so that no point, either to right or left, commanded more than a score of yards of it.

In front, from just outside the parapet to a depth of some twenty yards, stretched the spider-web of wire entanglements, and a little farther down on the right there had been a copse of horn-beam saplings.  An attempt had been made by the enemy during the morning to capture and entrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the movement had been seen, and the artillery fire, which had been so incessant all the morning, denoted the searching of this and the rendering of it untenable.  How thorough that searching had been was clear, for that which had been an acre of wood was now but a heap of timber fit only for faggots.  Scarcely a tree was left standing, and Michael, looking out of one of the peep-holes by the light of a star-shell saw that the wire entanglements were thick with leaves that the wind and the firing had detached from the broken branches.  In turn, the wire entanglements had come in for some shelling by the enemy, and a squad of men were out now under cover of the darkness repairing these.  There was a slight dip in the ground here, and by crouching and lying they were out of sight of the trenches opposite; but there were some snipers in that which had been a wood, from whom there came occasional shots.  Then, from lower down to the right, there came a fusillade from the English lines suddenly breaking out, and after a few minutes as suddenly stopping again.  But the sniping from the wood had ceased.