sufficiently squelched. And indeed, he had no cause to
worry. The Powers that Be had sent Thatchy into the West where the
battle line was changing every day and roads were being made and
destroyed and given new directions; where the highway which took one to
Headquarters one day led into the lair of the Hun on the next, and all
the land was topsy-turvy and changing like the designs in a
kaleidoscope--for the very good reason that Thatchy invariably reached
his destination and could be depended upon to come back, through all the
chaos, as a cat returns to her home. The prison camps in Germany were
not without Allied dispatch-riders who had become "rattled" and had
blundered into the enemy's arms, but Thatchy had a kind of uncanny extra
sense, a bump of locality, if you will, and that is why they had sent
him into this geographical tangle where maps became out of date as fast
as they were made.

The sun was not yet up when they reached a wider road running crossways
to the one out of the village and here many troops were waiting as far
up and down the road as Tom could see. A narrow ditch led away from the
opposite side of the road through the fields beyond, and looking up and
down the road he could see that there were other ditches like it.

The tanks were already lumbering and waddling across the fields, for all
the world like great clumsy mud turtles, with soldiers perched upon them
as if they were having a straw ride. Before Tom and his companions
entered the nearest ditch he could see crowds of soldiers disappearing
into other ditches far up the road.

[Illustration: SHOWING WHERE THE AMERICANS WERE BILLETED: CANTIGNY,
WHICH THEY CAPTURED AND THE ROUTE TAKEN BY TOM AND THE CARRIERS. ARROWS
SHOW THE AREA OF ATTACK.]

The fields above them were covered with shell holes, a little cemetery
flanked one side of the zigzag way, and the big dugouts of the reserves
were everywhere in this backyard of the trench area. Out of narrow,
crooked side avenues soldiers poured into the communication trench which
the wire carriers were following, falling in ahead of them.

"We'll get into the road after the boys go over and then you'll have
more room for your machine. Close quarters, hey?" Tom's nearest
companion said.

When they reached the second-line trench the boys were leaving it, by
hundreds as it seemed to Tom, and crowding through the crooked
communication trenches. The wire carriers followed on, holding up the
wire at i