eary bodies and relaxed their tense nerves after what
had seemed a nightmare.

"As long as we're going to join the army," said Tom, "we might as well
make a rule now. We won't both sleep at the same time till we're out of
Germany. We got to live up to that rule no matter how tired we get."

"I'm game," said Archer. "You go to sleep now and when I get good and
sleepy I'll wake you up."

"In about two hours," said Tom. "Then you can sleep till it's light.
Then we'll see if it's safe to stay here. Keep looking in that
direction--the way we came. And if you see any lights, wake me up."

Archer did not obey these directions at all, for he sat with his hands
clasped over his knees, gazing down across the dark marshland below. Two
hours, three hours, four hours, he sat there and scarcely stirred. And
as the time dragged on and there were no lights and no sounds he took
fresh courage and hope. He was beginning to realize the value of the
stolid determination, the resourcefulness, the keen eye and stealthy
foot and clear brain of the comrade who lay sleeping at his side. He had
wanted to tell Tom Slade what he thought of him and how he trusted him,
but he did not know how. So he just sat there, hour in and hour out, and
let the weary pathfinder of Temple Camp sleep until he awoke of his own
accord.

"All right," said Archer then, blinking. "Nothing happened."

CHAPTER X

THE SOLDIER'S PAPERS

All that day they stayed in their leafy refuge. They could look down
across the marshy meadows they had crossed to the trellised vineyard of
the Leteurs, looking orderly and symmetrical in the distance like a
two-storied field, and beyond that the massive gables of the gray,
forsaken house.

They could see the whole neighboring country in panorama. Other houses
were discernible at infrequent intervals along the road which wound
southward through the lowland between the hills where the boys were and
the Vosges Mountains (the "Blue Alsatian Mountains") to the west.
Through the long, daylight hours Tom studied the country carefully. Now,
as never before (for he knew how much depended on it), he watched for
every scrap of knowledge which might afford any inference or deduction
to help them in their flight.

"You can see how it is," he told Archer, as they watched the little
compass needle, waiting for it to settle. "This is a ridge and it runs
north and south. I kind of think it's the west side of the valley of a
river, lik