rol.

Sergeant Mahan was a good soldier. Yet a minute earlier he had almost
ruined his reputation as such. He had been hard put to it to refrain
from leaving the ranks of his drilling company, a furlong from the
rocks, and running at record speed toward the boulders. For he had seen
the supposed nurse pass that way. And almost directly afterward he had
seen Bruce follow her thither. And he could guess what would happen.

Luckily for the sake of discipline, the order of "Break ranks!" was
given before Mahan could disgrace himself by such unmartial behavior.
And, on the instant, the Sergeant broke into a run in the direction of
the rocks.

Wondering at his eccentric action, several of the soldiers followed.
The company captain, at sight of a knot of his men dashing at breakneck
speed toward the boulders, started at a more leisurely pace in the same
direction.

Mahan had reached the edge of the rocks when his ears were greeted by a
yell of mortal fear. The captain and the rest, catching the sound, went
faster. Screech after screech rang from the rocky enclosure.

Mahan rounded the big boulder at the crest of the ridge and flung
himself upon the two combatants, as they thrashed about in a tumultuous
dual mass on the ground. And just then Bruce at last found his grip on
Stolz's throat.

A stoical German signal-corps officer, on a hilltop some miles to
eastward, laid aside his field-glass and calmly remarked to a man at
his side

"We have lost a good spy!"

Such was the sole epitaph and eulogy of Herr Heinrich Stolz, from his
army.

Meantime, Sergeant Mahan was prying loose the collie's ferocious jaws
from their prey and was tugging with all his might to drag the dog off
the shrieking spy. The throat-hold, he noted, was a bare inch from the
jugular.

The rest of the soldiers, rushing up pell-mell, helped him pull the
infuriated Bruce from his victim. The spectacle of their admired
dog-hero, so murderously mauling a woman of the Red Cross, dazed them
with horror.

"Take him AWAY!" bellowed Stolz, delirious with pain and fear. "He's
KILLED me--der gottverdammte Teufelhund!"

And now the crazed victim's unconscious use of German was not needed to
tell every one within hearing just who and what he was. For the
quavering tones were no longer a rich contralto. They were a throaty
baritone. And the accent was Teutonic.

"Bruce!" observed Top-Sergeant Mahan next morning, "I've always said a
man who kicks a dog is m