felt herself in a tremor. She knew
instinctively that it would never do for her sex to be discovered.

She was not discovered, however. They stood upon the surface. Major
Marchand took her hand and led her quietly away. The earth about them
looked gray; but the blackness of night wrapped them around. There was
not a light to be seen.

She realized more by the sense of locality she possessed than by aught
else that they were on the lowland far beyond that ridge through which
they had first tunneled after Sergeant Tremp had joined them.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as they stumbled on. Below
them and ahead, she occasionally caught the glint of water. It was a
pool of considerable size. She believed it must be the small lake
Major Marchand had spoken of.

Suddenly Ruth seized her companion's arm.

"There!" she whispered.

"What is it?" he asked in the same low tone.

"There are men. See them?"

"No, no, Mademoiselle," he told her with a small chuckle. "There are
no men standing so boldly there. They are posts--posts to which our
barbed-wire entanglements are fixed."

"Oh!" she breathed with relief.

"Be not alarmed----" He seized her shoulder as he spoke and so great
was his sudden pressure on it that he carried her with him to the
ground.

A shower of flare rockets had erupted from the German trenches. They
sailed up over No Man's Land and burst, flooding acres of the rough
ground with a white glare.

The major and Ruth lay flat upon the ground, and the girl knew enough
not to move. Nor did she cry out. For five minutes the eruption
lasted. Then all died down and there was no reply from the American
side. Major Marchand chuckled.

"That was most unexpected, was it not, Mademoiselle? But have no fear.
The first patrol has already been across here to the German wire
entanglements to-night, and found nothing stirring. It is not yet that
we shall run into Germans."

They arose, and the major led straight on again, slowly descending the
easy slope of this hillside. Finally they reached a gaping hole. Ruth
knew it must have been made by a shell. It was thirty feet or more
across, and when they descended into it she found it to be fully twenty
feet deep.

"Now you may show a flash of your light, Mademoiselle," the Frenchman
advised her. "Thank you. Remove that casque you wear. These would
attract much attention upon the German side. Here is a German helmet
to take the