t was better than trench-work; and the "Here-We-Comes" enjoyed
it--for a day or so. Then trouble had set in.

A group of soldiers were lounging on the stone seat in front of the
village estaminet. Being off duty, they were reveling in that popular
martial pastime known to the Tommy as "grousing" and to the Yankee
doughboy as "airing a grouch."

Top-Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army, was haranguing the
others. Some listened approvingly, others dissentingly and others not
at all.

"I tell you," Mahan declared for the fourth time, "somebody's
double-crossing us again. There's a leak. And if they don't find out
where it is, a whole lot of good men and a million dollars' worth of
supplies are liable to spill out through that same leak. It--"

"But," argued his crony, old Sergeant Vivier, in his hard-learned
English, "but it may all be of a chance, mon vieux. It may, not be the
doubled cross,--whatever a doubled cross means,--but the mere chance.
Such things often--"

"Chance, my grandmother's wall-eyed cat!" snorted Mahan. "Maybe it
might have been chance--when this place hadn't been bombed for a
month--for a whole flight of boche artillery and airship grenades to
cut loose against it the day General Pershing happened to stop here for
an hour on his way to Chateau-Thierry. Maybe that was chance--though I
know blamed well it wasn't. Maybe it was chance that the place wasn't
bombed again till two days ago, when that troop-train had to spend such
a lot of time getting shunted at the junction. Maybe it was chance that
the church, over across the street, hadn't been touched since the last
drive, till our regiment's wounded were put in it--and that it's been
hit three times since then. Maybe any one of those things--and of a
dozen others was chance. But it's a cinch that ALL of them weren't
chance. Chance doesn't work that way. I--"

"Perhaps," doubtfully assented old Vivier, "perhaps. But I little like
to believe it. For it means a spy. And a spy in one's midst is like to
a snake in one's blankets. It is a not pleasing comrade. And it stands
in sore need of killing."

"There's spies everywhere," averred Mahan. "That's been proved often
enough. So why not here? But I wish to the Lord I could lay hands on
him! If this was one of the little sheltered villages, in a valley, his
work would be harder. And the boche airships and the long-rangers
wouldn't find us such a simple target. But up here on this ridge, all a