ing. Leaping and scrambling as best
they could over the heaps of brick, stone and splintered wood, they
emerged through the hole cut for them by the officer. He had chopped
through the one beam that held all the others, or most of the others
in place, and the crisscross structure had collapsed, allowing the
boys to escape.

"Come on! Come on!" cried Jimmy. "Everybody out!"

And they leaped out only just in time, for as Bob, the last to make
his way to safety, cleared the jagged barrier, a burst of flames and
smoke swept into what had been the boys' prison.

Now they stood on the green grass, in the open, with the burning ruins
of the mill at their backs. And confronting them, still holding the
axe, and panting from his terrific exertions, was the strange officer.

And as the young soldiers looked at him they wondered, more than ever,
who he was.

CHAPTER XIII

A PERILOUS JOURNEY

Almost at once there set in a reaction, as was natural under the
circumstances. The Khaki Boys had been keyed up to such a high pitch
through the battle, the attack on the hill, the subsequent shelling
of it, and their own dangerous position after the collapse of the
building, that now their rescue hardly seemed real.

"Say, I'm about all in!" exclaimed Bob, as he sank down on the grass.

"Same here," agreed Jimmy, staggering to a seat.

"Take it easy, boys, take it easy," counseled their rescuer. "And
better come a bit farther away from the fire. The whole place is
going, and the wind's blowing strongly this way. We're too much in
line with it."

He spoke the truth. The boys were enveloped, part of the time, in a
haze of smoke and a swirl of burning brands. Tired, and physically
and mentally exhausted as they were, they scrambled to their feet--for
they had all stretched out on the grass--and made their way to a spot
where they could breathe with freedom. The mill ruins were now burning
fiercely.

"Any more left in there!" asked the officer, pointing with his axe
towards the fiery structure.

"None alive," answered Jimmy, as he thought of their brave comrades
in arms who had perished in wiping out the German machine-gun nest. It
was, perhaps, a fitting funeral pyre for them.

"Stay here and I'll get you some water," offered the blue-shirted
officer. "That will fetch you around quicker than anything else. I can
get you a little food, too, I think--emergency rations, if you need
them."

"We aren't exactly hungry, sir