officer evidently knew the ground for he went straight to the
bush where the hogshead stood concealed, and beckoned to his two
underlings. Tom, not daring to stir, looked expectantly at Roscoe, whose
rifle was aimed and resting across a convenient branch before him. The
sniper's intent profile was a study. Tom wondered why he did not fire.
He saw one of the Boches approach the officer, who evidently would not
deign to stoop, and kneel at the foot of the bush. Then the crisp,
echoing report of Roscoe's rifle rang out, and on the instant the
officer and the remaining soldier disappeared behind the leaf-covered
hogshead. Tom was aware of the one German lying beside the bush, stark
and motionless, and of Roscoe jerking his head and screwing up his mouth
in a sort of spontaneous vexation. Then he looked suddenly at Tom and
winked unmirthfully with a kind of worried annoyance.

"Think they can hit us from there? Think they know where we are?" Tom
asked in the faintest whisper.

"'Tisn't that," Roscoe whispered back. "Look at that flat stone under
the bush there. Shh! I couldn't get him in the right light before. Shh!"

Narrowing his eyes, Tom scanned the earth at the foot of the bush and
was just able to discern a little band of black upon a gray stone there.
It was evidently a wet spot on the dusty stone and for a second he
thought it was blood; then the staggering truth dawned upon him that in
shooting the Hun in the very act of letting loose the murderous liquid
Roscoe had shot a hole in the hogshead and the potent poison was flowing
out rapidly and down into the stream.

And just in that moment there flashed into Tom's mind the picture of
that weary, perspiring boy in khaki down in captured Cantigny, who had
mopped his forehead, saying, "A drink of water would go good now."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TOM USES HIS FIRST BULLET

It had been a pet saying of Tom's scoutmaster back in America that you
should _wait long enough to make up your mind and not one second
longer_.

Tom knew that the pressure of liquid above that fatal bullet hole near
the bottom of the hogshead was great enough to send the poison fairly
pouring out. He could not see this death-dealing stream, for it was
hidden in the bush, but he knew that it would continue to pour forth
until several of these great receptacles had been emptied and the
running brook with its refreshing coolness had become an instrument of
frightful death.

Safe behind the