lieutenant and Mahan started to cut a passageway through them.

As the very first strand parted under his pressure, Mahan laid
one hand warningly on the lieutenant's sleeve, and then passed
the same prearranged warning down the line to the left.

Silence--moveless, tense, sharply listening silence--followed his
motion. Then the rest of the party heard the sound which Mahan's
keener ears had caught a moment earlier--the thud of many
marching feet. Here was no furtive creeping, as when the twelve
Yankees had moved along. Rather was it the rhythmic beat of at
least a hundred pairs of shapeless army boots--perhaps of more.
The unseen marchers were moving wordlessly, but with no effort at
muffling the even tread of their multiple feet.

"They're coming this way!" breathed Sergeant Mahan almost without
sound, his lips close to the excited young lieutenant's ear. "And
they're not fifty paces off. That means they're boches. So near
the German wire, our men would either be crawling or else
charging, not marching! It's a company--maybe a battalion--coming
back from a reconnaissance, and making for a gap in their own
wire some where near here. If we lay low there's an off chance
they may pass us by."

Without awaiting the lieutenant's order, Mahan passed along the
signal for every man to drop to earth and lie there. He all but
forced the eagerly gesticulating lieutenant to the ground.

On came the swinging tread of the Germans. Mahan, listening
breathlessly, tried to gauge the distance and the direction. He