“Cigs are best in tins; in boxes they get very damp. Cheer on! Good luck to you.
“Dick.”
Zaidos handed back the letter with a smile.
“Thank you very much,” he said. “That’s certainly a fine letter. It was nice of you to share it with me.”
“That’s all right,” said the boy. “Everyone is glad to read every other fellow’s letter out here, whether he knows anything about the people or not. We get so few letters. The people at home send us candles and matches and kippers, as you see from the letter, and they send lots of cigarettes to my brother. I don’t smoke. They send us paper and envelopes, too. You know all our letters are opened, don’t you? I don’t see that it makes much difference. I’ve always thought that I could see how I could write a pretty innocent looking letter if I was a spy.
“They have had a lot of trouble with spies at Verdun, where my brother is. Why, would you believe it, the Germans have come right inside the French and English lines in broad daylight to do their spying! One bold ruse they worked just once was to rig up one of their automobiles to look like our ambulances. That car carried six Germans, all dressed as English soldiers, and once inside our lines they went dashing around as aids and orderlies.
“All went well with them, they had seen the whole layout and gone down to the very last trench, when one of them stumbled and out came a thoughtless ‘Mein Gott!’ for he thought he had broken his ankle. Now of course that would have been a catastrophe indeed, but so was that slip into the German tongue. A kindly Providence saw to it that an alert Tommy had heard, and in a trice those six make-believe English soldiers had been rounded up and were on their way to headquarters. Next morning there was a sunrise party, for those Germans must be taught it isn’t ever healthy for them inside our lines.”
“Indeed they must!” agreed Zaidos heartily.
“We have got to beat them in the end,” said the English soldier with the quiet sureness that has so often helped England to victory. “But they are sure as sure that they will beat us, so they keep hammering away and they will keep it up just as long as their men last.”
As if in answer to his last statement a shell struck the earth twenty yards away, and exploded. Another followed, and fell in almost exactly the same place.