across in an hour or so. The
rest will run for it--take my word--the moment I open fire."

"I'll take your word, Tish," I said. "But what if they don't run?"

She merely waved her hand.

"My plan is simply this," she said: "I've been tinkering with that
machine gun most of the day, and my conviction is that it will work. You
simply turn a handle like a hand sewing machine. As soon as you hear me
starting it you leave the church by that shell hole at the back and go
as rapidly as possible back to the American lines. I'll guarantee," she
added grimly, "that not a German leaves that cellar across the street
until my arm's worn out."

"What shall I say, Tish?" I quavered.

I shall never forget the way she drew herself up.

"Say," she directed, "that we have captured the town of V---- and that
they can come over and plant the flag."

I must profess to a certain anxiety during the period of waiting that
followed. I felt keenly the necessity of leaving my dear Tish to capture
and hold the town alone. And various painful thoughts of Aggie added to
my uneasiness. Nor was my perturbation decreased by the reentrance of
the lookout some half hour after he had gone out. Concealed behind
debris we listened to his footsteps as he ascended the tower, and could
distinctly hear his ferocious mutterings when he discovered that the
rope had been cut.

But strangely enough he did not call to the other man, cut off on the
platform above.

"I don't believe there was another," I whispered to Tish. But she was
confident that she had heard one, and she observed that very probably
the two had quarreled.

"It is a well-known tendency of two men, cut off from their kind," she
said, "to become violently embittered toward each other. Listen. He is
coming down."

I regret to say that he raised an immediate alarm, and that we were
forced to retire behind our sarcophagus in the cellar for some time.
During the search the enemy was close to us a number of times, and had
not one of them stepped on the nail which had served us so usefully I
fear to think what might have happened. He did so, however, and retired
snarling and limping.

I believe Tish has given nine o'clock in her report to G. H. Q. as the
time when she opened fire. It was therefore about eight forty-five when
I left the church. For some time before that the cellar across had been
filling up with the enemy, and the search for us had ceased. By Tish's
instructions I kept to bac