ntrolled her laughter, however. Here, at the first cross-trench,
stood a sentry who let them by when the ghostly leader of the trio,
whose face she could not see at all, had whispered the password. Ruth
walked between her two companions, and her dress was not noticed in the
dark.

Soon they were out of the tunnels through the ridge. Later she learned
that the ridge was honeycombed with them. The trench they entered was
broader and open to the sky. And muddy!

She stepped once off the "duckboards" laid down in the middle of the
passway and dipped half-way to her knee in the mire. She felt that if
the major had not pulled her up quickly she might have sunk completely
out of sight.

But she did not utter a sound. He whispered in her ear:

"I admire your courage, Mademoiselle. Just a short distance farther.
Do not lose heart."

"I am just beginning to feel brave," she whispered in return.

Presently the leader stopped. They waited a moment while he fumbled
along the boarded side of the trench. Then a plank slid back. It was
the door of a dugout.

"This way, Major," the man said in French.

The major pushed Ruth through the narrow opening. The plank door was
closed. It was a vile-smelling place.

A match was scratched, a tiny flame sprang up, and then there flared a
candle--one of those trench candles made of rolled newspapers and
paraffin. It illumined the dugout faintly.

There were bunks along the walls, and in the middle of the planked cave
was a rustic table and two benches. Evidently the men who sometimes
occupied this trench had spent their idle hours here. But to Ruth
Fielding it seemed a fearful place in which to sleep, and eat, and loaf
away the long hours of trench duty.

"All ready for us, Tremp?" asked Major Marchand of the man who had led
them to this spot.

The American girl now saw that the man was a squat Frenchman in the
horizon blue uniform of the infantry and with the bars of a sergeant.
He was evidently one of the French officers assigned to teach the
Americans in the trenches.

In his own tongue the man replied to his superior. He drew from one of
the empty bunks two bulky bundles. The major shook them out and they
proved to be two suits of rubber over-alls and boots together--a
garment to be drawn on from the feet and fastened with buckled straps
over the shoulders. They enclosed the whole body to the armpits in a
waterproof garment.

"A complete disguise for you,