We are trying to work one of our little cunning stunts to-day. Last night I had an observation patrol out, and having no special job on, decided to devote our time to the examination of the Boche wire—their entanglements, you know, in the sector opposite our particular line. I had only two men with me: one of my own Platoon scouts and a lad named Hankin, of whom I have great hopes as a sniper. He's in my No. 3 Section, and a very safe and pretty shot with a rifle, especially at long ranges. He'd never been on patrol and was most anxious to go, and to have an opportunity of looking at the Boche line, to verify his suspicions regarding certain holes in the ground which he thought their snipers used. Our patrol had two interesting results, for one of which we have to thank Hankin's intelligence. The other was a bit of luck. The reason I took such a small patrol was that the aim was observation pure and simple; not strafing; and the men were more than usually tired, and had a lot of parapet repair work which had to be put through before daylight.

It was about a quarter to one in the morning when we went out, there having been too much moonlight before then. Hankin had prepared a regular chart of the Boche line from his own observations from his sniping post; quite a clever little map it is, showing clearly his suspected sniping shelters, of which there are four. We drew a blank in the first two of these, and for the third had to tack back from the line of the Boche wire, towards our own, along the side of an old sap, all torn to bits and broken in with shell fire. Hankin felt certain he had seen the flash of rifles from this hole; but I thought it was too near our own wire to attract any Boche sniper for regular use.

I need hardly say that on a job of this sort one moves very slowly, and uses the utmost possible precaution to prevent noise. It was now absolutely dark, the moon having gone down and the sky being much overcast. But for my luminous-faced compass (which one consults under one's coat flap to prevent it from showing) we should have been helpless. As it was, on the bearings I worked out before starting, we steered comfortably and fairly accurately.

All of a sudden came a shock, a rifle fired, as it seemed, under our noses, actually from about twenty-five paces ahead on the track we were making.

"That's him, sir," breathed Hankin in my right ear.

I looked at the compass. The shot came from dead on the spot where Hankin's third hole should be; the one we were making for then.

"How about a little bomb for him, sir?" whispered the scout on my left.

But I shook my head. Too much like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, and too much like asking the Boche for machine-gun fire. It was fair to assume the Boche sniper who fired that shot would be facing our trenches; the same direction in which we were facing at that moment, since we were working back from the German wire towards our own. I pushed my lips close up to Hankin's ear and whispered: "We'll try stalking him." Hankin nodded, quite pleased.

Then I whispered to the scout to follow us very, very carefully, and not too closely. I didn't want him to lose touch, but, for the sake of quietness, one would sooner, of course, go alone. We kept about six paces between us laterally, Hankin and myself, and we advanced by inches.

I must say I should have been grateful for a shade more light, or less inky blackness. The edge of that sniper's hole was not sloping, but sheer; and, crawling slowly along, I struck my right hand clean over it into nothingness, letting my chest down with an audible bump. Right before me then I heard a man's body swing round on the mud, and the sniper let out some kind of a German exclamation which was a sort of squeal. It was, really, much more like some wild animal's cry than anything human. I had to chance it then. The sound was so amazingly close. I couldn't see him, but— And when I sprang, the thing my hands gripped on first was not the beggar's windpipe or shoulders, as I had hoped, but his rifle, carried in his left hand on his left side.

It was rather like tom-cats coming to blows. I swear he spat. As you know, I'm rather heavy, and I think my spring, slightly to his left, knocked him off his balance. He hadn't any chance. But, though I got his left wrist, and covered his mouth with my chest, I was a bit uneasy about his right hand, which for the moment I couldn't find. Lucky for me he hadn't got a dagger in it, or he might have ripped me open. But Hankin pretty soon found his right hand, and then we hauled him up to his feet. I passed his rifle to the scout, and we just marched him along the front of our wire to Stinking Sap, and so into our own front trench; Hankin holding one of his arms, I taking the other, and the scout coming behind with the muzzle of the man's own rifle in the small of his back. There was no need to crawl, the night being as black as your hat; and in three or four minutes we had that sniper in front of "the Peacemaker" in the Company dug-out.

It was neat, wasn't it? And all thanks to the ingenious Hankin's careful observations and his chart. He'll get his first stripe for that, and very soon have another to keep it company, or I'm much mistaken. "The Peacemaker" was delighted, and wrote a full report of the capture to be sent down to Headquarters with the prisoner. Snipers are worth capturing, you know, and this looked like an intelligent chap whose cross-examination might be useful to our Brass-hats.

Queer thing about this sniper, he spoke English almost like a native. We are not allowed to examine prisoners on our own account. All that's done by the powers behind the line. But this fellow volunteered a little talk while we were getting the report made out. He was quite satisfied when he realised we were not going to harm him in any way, but it was perfectly clear he had expected to be done in. You'd have thought he would have known better. He'd spent nine years in London, part of the time a waiter, and later a clerk. He had lived at Kennington, and then in lodgings on Brixton Hill, I'll trouble you. Extraordinary, isn't it? He'd been told that London was practically in ruins, and that the Zepps had made life there impossible. He also thought that we in France were completely cut off from England, the Channel being in the hands of the German Navy, and England isolated and rapidly starving! I gather the Boches in the fighting line have no notion at all of the real facts of the war.

Well, having been so far successful, we decided to resume our patrol, the main purpose of which—examination of the Boche wire—hadn't been touched yet. So off we went again down Stinking Sap; and I could see that Hankin and Green, the scout, bore themselves as victors, with something of the swank of the old campaigner and hero of a thousand patrols. A great asset, mind you, is a reasonable amount of swank. These two had not been out before this night, but already they climbed over the parapet and moved about in No Man's Land with a real and complete absence of the slightest hint of nervousness.

Now I must cut this short because I have to go an errand for "the Peacemaker," to have a little talk with a Battery Commander. We had a pretty good prowl up and down the Boche wire, and made an interesting discovery on the extreme left of our sector. There was a shade more light then; not from the moon, of course, but from stars; the sky having become less overcast. I ran my nose right up against a miniature sign-post; a nice little thing, with feathers stuck in cracks near the top of it, presumably to give Boche patrols their bearings. I should have liked to take it away as a souvenir, but I didn't want to arouse Hun suspicions, so left it. The interesting thing was that this little sign-post—about eighteen inches high, planted among the front wire stakes—pointed the way in to the Boche trenches by an S-shaped lane through their wire entanglements; so shaped, of course, as to prevent it from being easily seen from our line.

We crawled along this lane a bit, far enough to make sure that it was a clear fairway into the Boche front trench. Then I got a careful bearing, which I subsequently verified half a dozen times; and we made our way back to Stinking Sap. I haven't time to tell you of our cunning plan about this discovery. That's what I'm to see the Battery Commander about. But if we can make the arrangement we want to make with the gunners, we'll bring off a nice little bombing raid to-night, and I'll let you know all about it in my next letter. Meanwhile I must scurry off, or I shall miss the Battery Commander in his rounds, and there will be a telling-off for your

"Temporary Gentleman."