s salary."

"Tish," I said, "suppose they find Aggie?"

She yawned and turned over.

"Aggie's got more brains than you think she has," was her comment. "She
hates dying about as much as most people. My own private opinion is and
has been that she went back to our lines hours ago."

"Tish!" I exclaimed. "Then why----"

"I just want to try a little experiment," she said drowsily, and was
immediately asleep.

At last I slept myself, and when we wakened it was daylight, and the
Germans were in full possession of the town. They inspected the church
building overhead, but left it quickly; and Tish drew a keen deduction
from that.

"Well, that's something in our favor," she said. "Evidently they're
afraid the thing will fall in on them."

At eight o'clock she complained of being hungry, and I felt the need of
food myself. With her customary promptness she set out to discover food,
leaving me alone, a prey to sad misgivings. In a short time, however,
she returned and asked me if I'd seen a piece of wire anywhere.

"I've got considerable barbed wire sticking in me in various places," I
said rather tartly, "if that will do."

But she only stood, staring about her in the semidarkness.

"A lath with a nail in the end of it would answer," she observed.
"Didn't you step on a nail last night?"

Well, I had, and at last we found it. It was in the end of a plank and
seemed to be precisely what she wanted. She took it away with her, and
was gone some twenty minutes. At the end of that time she returned
carrying carefully a small panful of fried bacon.

"I had to wait," she explained. "He had just put in some fresh slices
when I got there."

While we ate she explained.

"There is a small opening to the street," she said, "where there is a
machine gun, now covered with debris. Just outside I perceived a soldier
cooking his breakfast. Of course there was a chance that he would not
look away at the proper moment, but he stood up to fill his pipe. I'd
have got his coffee too, but in the fight he kicked it over."

"What fight?" I asked.

"He blamed another soldier for taking the bacon. He was really savage,
Lizzie. From the way he acted I gather that they haven't any too much to
eat."

Breakfast fortified us both greatly, but it also set me to thinking
sadly of Aggie, whose morning meal was a crisp slice of bacon, varied
occasionally by an egg. I had not Tish's confidence in her escape. And
Tish was restless. She insist