ll, then, as long as we know we're going in the right direction
now, let's double quick and cover as much ground as we can straight
away, before we get turned around again," suggested Roger.

His plan was voted a good one, and the tired young soldiers hurried
on. But to their chagrin it soon became cloudy, and then a mist
settled down obscuring every gleam of sunshine, and they had to
depend on their sense of direction, which, truth to tell, was not very
accurate.

When night came, it found the boys on a lonely stretch of land, partly
bogs, with, here and there, patches of woods. The prospect was most
gloomy, for their food was getting scarce, and they were tired and.
sore. Their wounds, slight as they were, bothered them, and though
none complained, each one would have been glad to be able to slip into
some dugout, no matter how rough, and there rest.

"What shall we do!" asked Jimmy, as it became almost too dark to
proceed along an uncertain path. "Shall we hole in or keep on?"

"It's going to be cold, holing in this night," replied Roger, with a
shiver. "Look at that fog!" he went on, as the mists rolled up from a
swamp. "It goes right through you!"

"Well, then let's keep on walking," said Jimmy, trying to speak
cheerily.

They walked on in silence. Bob did not get off any of his queer,
improvised rhymes, and as for Iggy he turned up the collar of his
coat, hunched his shoulders; and seemed like some old man tramping
along.

"Hark!" suddenly called Jimmy, and the words came in a tense whisper.
It was as if he had said "Halt!" for his chums came to a stop on the
instant.

"What is it?" asked Bob.

"Don't you hear some one walking toward us?" went on Jimmy, his voice
still low and tense.

They all listened. The fog swirled around them in cold, white clouds.
And then, through the darkness, they all heard, and distinctly, this
time, the measured beat of marching feet.

"Soldiers all right!" commented Roger in a whisper.

"Yes, but what kind?" was Jimmy's question. "Are they our boys, some
of the Allies or--Germans?"

"What shall we do?" asked Franz, and, in the misty darkness he turned
toward Jimmy, as seemed natural.

"Keep still," was the advice given. "And crouch down. If they are
Boches well let 'em pass--if they'll be so obliging as to go on. If
they're some of our boys--"

"Oh, boy! If they only are!" sighed Bob.

The tramping feet came nearer.

"They're headed right this way!" declared Fra