o me
our duty is to steer clear of such parties, as we should do in any
case, to push beyond them, and to ascertain what's happening towards
the north."

"Quite so! At your orders, Henri," smiled Jules, as full of merriment
as ever. Indeed, the fiercer the conflict had grown, the more
desperate the efforts of the Germans had become, and the more
terrifically the fighting had developed, the higher had this young
fellow's spirits risen. Of fear he showed not a trace, though of
excitement he showed every evidence. Sparkling with wit, as lively as
a cricket, wonderfully cheery, he had stood in the forefront of the
battle, not grim like many a comrade, not with teeth set and hands and
fingers clenching his rifle, but jovial, smiling, yet with a deadly
earnestness masked by his merry manner.

"Lead on, my Henri," he said. "Under your directions we made not such
a bad success of that affair in Germany. Let's see now what you can do
in this part of France when we have soldiers and not civilians to deal
with!"

Plunging on into the wood, it was not long before they heard voices to
their left, and, creeping forward, discovered a German officers' patrol
sheltering under the trees and munching their breakfast. A dozen yards
farther on there were some seven or eight men, while voices still
farther to the left demonstrated the fact that there were other parties.

"No matter," said Henri; "we have already said that we expected Germans
to be in the wood. What we want to know is where the main force is.
Let's push on and do our duty."

CHAPTER XII

A Reconnoitring-party

For perhaps half an hour Henri and Jules crept through the wood which
they had gained from the heights of the Cote de Poivre, turning and
twisting here and there as German voices warned them of the proximity
of enemy parties, and sometimes stealing past a group of men from whom
they were separated by only a few feet of thick undergrowth.

"There's the edge of the wood yonder, the northern edge," said Henri in
a little while, stopping and looking upward. "It's lighter in that
direction, and without doubt we are now getting down to the road which
runs from Beaumont to Vacherauville--a road likely enough to be used by
the enemy in his advance on our positions. Look out that we don't
expose ourselves at the edge, and let us talk only in whispers."

Jules gripped him a moment later by the sleeve and pulled him down
forcibly to the ground, then he