ble disease of prisoners of war is a still more ghastly
affair--an episode frequently repeated in the case of Germany.

"Out! Hurrah! Mon Dieu! Out of that awful hole," coughed Henri,
shaking the dirt out of his hair and brushing it from behind his ears.
"Out, my boys! Away from those German guards, and away from that
Commandant and the whole breed of 'em."

Jules giggled. He was possessed of a lighter nature altogether, was
perhaps of more flippant disposition than his chum, and had less
stamina about him. Not that he was lacking in courage, or in dash, or
in that elan which the French generally have displayed so magnificently
in this conflict, only Jules was, perhaps, just a trifle effeminate,
and giggles seemed to come almost naturally from him. Now, as he lay
close to the ragged edge of the opening through which he had been
forcibly dragged by Stuart and Henri, and as he spluttered and blew
dirt which had introduced itself into his mouth from his discoloured
lips, he gave vent to a laugh, a smothered sound of merriment, perhaps
a semi-hysterical giggle, in any case to a sound which grated on the
senses of the Englishman terribly.

"Burr! Stop that!" he commanded, and somehow, for some unascertained
reason, Henri and Jules, who would have resented such tones from him on
any other occasion, accepted them now without a murmur. "Shut up!"
growled Stuart. "Hist! There's one of those beastly sentries coming
near the entanglements--and what's that?"

There were other sounds than those of steps within Ruhleben camp, that
odious place of misery out of which they had broken, other noises than
the heavy tramp of a ponderous Landsturm guard as he strode from behind
the hut till the barbed-wire entanglements stopped his progress and he
rattled his bayonet upon it, sounds which came from another quarter
from beneath the ground, from the tunnel in fact from which Henri and
his friends had so recently emerged.

"Hist!" exclaimed Stuart in warning tones. "Keep as low and as flat as
you can. Thank goodness! That sentry fellow, after making enough
noise to drown the sound of our voices, has turned away without seeing
us; but--but--what's that?"

Henri stretched out a hand and gripped him by the sleeve.

"Down there," he whispered, "down there in the tunnel from which we
have just come, there's someone stumbling along. And cast your eye
into the opening; isn't that the gleam of a torch? Isn't that light
being th