on, followed by Ned and Bob--a
quartette acting as one man.

It was the first really big battle in which the Cresville chums had
taken part. They had been out on skirmish work and on night patrol,
and they had come in conflict with parties of Germans, but no large
bodies. They had even each been wounded slightly, but never before, in
all their lives, had they had a part in such a hailstorm of death,
such a turmoil of blood, mud, smoke, gas and flying bullets as now. On
and over the rough shell-pitted ground they rushed toward the German
trenches. On they rushed in the gray dawn of the morning, firing as
they ran, hardly stopping to take aim, for they could see the gray,
indefinite mass before them, and knew they were the German troops who
had rushed out of their trenches to meet the onslaught.

At first the attack had been a surprise--a surprise so great that the
Germans could not, at the beginning, reply even with adequate rifle
fire, to say nothing of artillery and machine guns.

But, in a moment, seemingly, all this was changed. Tongues and slivers
of fire began to spit out from the gray ranks opposing the Americans.
There was a snarl of the lighter artillery guns, the spiteful bark of
the rifles and the wicked rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns, which the
Germans depended on, more than on anything else, to stop a rush of our
infantry.

Half way across No Man's Land rushed Ned, Bob, and Jerry, with their
cheering, madly yelling comrades, and then the toll of death began. It
was the fortune of war. Those that lived by rifles and bayonets must
perish by them, and for the deaths that they exacted of the Huns their
lives were exacted in return.

Jerry, who with grim-set face and blazing eyes rushed on at the side
of the tall Southern giant, heard a dull thud. Then came a sort of
gasping, choking cry that was audible even above the horrid din of
battle. Jerry, in a glance, saw his big comrade crumple up in a heap,
the whole front of his body torn away by a piece of shell. And for one
terrible instant Jerry felt that he, himself, must fall there, too, so
terrible was the sight. But he nerved himself to go on, and a backward
glance showed that Bob had to leap over the dead body of the lad who
but a moment before was yelling encouragement to others.

But it was war, and it had to be.

On and on they rushed. Now they were at the first line of the German
barbed wire. Some of it had been cut by the swift firing of shrapn