mouthful of it just then would have been new life to us. We stumbled on
like machines because our spirits willed it so, but truly at times the
weariness of the body was like to master the spirit.

"We must come across something in time," I tried to cheer him with--feeling
little cheer myself.

"If it's only the hole they'll find our bodies in," he said down-heartedly.

And a very short while after that, as though to point his words, we fell
together into a slimy ditch, and it seemed to me that Le Marchant lay
unable to rise.

I put my arms under him, and strove to lift him, and felt a shock of horror
as another man's arms round him on the other side touched mine, and I found
another man trying to lift him also.

"Bon Dieu!" I gasped in my fright, and let the body go, as the other jerked
out the same words, and released his hold also, and the body fell between
us.

"Dieu-de-dieu, Carré! But I thought this was you," panted Le Marchant in a
shaky voice.

"And I thought it was you."

We bent together and lifted the fallen one to solid ground, but it was too
dark to see his face.

"Is he dead?"