ction would not be denied.

Back, and still further back, the struggling lines of grey-coated Hun
fighters had been thrust. Every day brought a new surprise for the
Kaiser's generals. They were aghast at the resistless method of forcing
the fighting adopted by these men from overseas, who seemed to have
brought new and amazing elements into the work.

Already many of the more astute German leaders had begun to see the
handwriting on the wall traced by the finger of Destiny. Nevertheless
they had now descended to uttering boasts of how easy it was going to be
to make these "crazy Yankees" pay a frightful price for every mile
gained.

But the Germans who figured thus confidently failed to reckon on the
rapidly growing discontent at home, where the populace was close to the
starvation point. Though their soldiers still fought desperately on, it
was with the sullen mien of those who had lost their morale and were
close to collapse.

On the day when Tom Raymond and Jack Parmly waited, the latter so
impatiently, for the anticipated signal to go into the air, the two
armies were joined in battle.

The Americans had been given the most difficult task of all, which was
to clean up the great Argonne Forest, and then sweep the fleeing Huns
back, past Sedan, famous for the defeat of the second Napoleon, over the
border into Germany itself.

Here Hindenburg had concentrated most of his best troops, including the
crack Guard regiments. He realized that the gravest peril of all lay in
the "push" of this new army, which had already given such an excellent
account of its fighting qualities.

In that vast tract of wooded country known as the Argonne the Huns had
located innumerable machine-gun nests designed to check the advance of
the Yankees and make them pay a fearful price for what they got.

Two men secreted in some nook could open a deadly fire on the oncoming
boys in khaki and mow them down like ripe grain before they themselves
were wiped out in a furious rush. It paid the German commanders to
sacrifice two for a dozen or twenty; though at times they had to chain
the gunners to their weapon, for fear they would slip away at the last.

Six battleplanes all in a row were now starting off in rapid succession.
A whirr that sounded loud and insistent above the dull roar of the heavy
guns, a sudden movement that quickly increased in velocity until the
plane was bounding like a rabbit over the open ground, then an upward
slan