place—in a shell hole, and Franz is with him.
See anything of Iggy?"

"No," answered Jimmy. "I'm afraid he's done for. If I get a chance, I'm going back to see. Looks as if Fritz had had enough at this sector."

"Aren't we going forward?" some one called to the lieutenant in charge. "Come on! Lead us to the Boches!"

"Have to wait for orders," was the grim answer. "We were told to halt here. Can't go on without orders!"

There were murmurs of disapproval at this, but the discipline was strict.

"Anybody badly wounded?" asked the lieutenant. "If there is, now's your chance to get some first-aid treatment. Later you can't, perhaps."

There were one or two who were suffering badly, and these took advantage of the lull in the fighting to apply bandages to their hurts.

"Poor Iggy!" mused Jimmy, and then, as the lieutenant crawled near him—for no one was standing upright—the sergeant asked:

"May I crawl back, sir, and see what happened to Corporal Pulinski?"

"Did you see anything happen to him?"

"Yes, sir. I saw him blown backward when the big shell exploded, and he seemed to be falling toward some sort of shell crater. If we're going to be held here long, I'd like to go to his rescue—to see if he's still alive."

"Very well," assented the young commanding officer. "Ill take a chance and let you." He knew of the pact of friendship existing among the five Brothers. "Take some one with you. But crawl—don't try to walk."

"I won't, sir. May Sergeant Barlow come along?"

"Yes. But come back if we get the order to advance again."

"I will, yes, sir!"

Swinging around on his stomach, and calling to Roger, telling him of the permission received, Jimmy Blaise started toward the rear to rescue, if possible, the Polish lad.

"But I'm afraid we'll find him done for," confided Jimmy to Roger. "The shell must have landed right in front of him. It made a hole as big as a house."

"Poor Iggy!" murmured Roger.

CHAPTER III

SENT TO THE REAR

Roger Barlow, who was slightly behind his comrade in their queer progress back toward the shell hole near which the Polish lad had been seen to fall, observed his fellow sergeant come to a halt.

"What's the matter—hit?" cried Roger anxiously. And this well might have been the case, since, though there was a lull in the fighting immediately in front of Company E, there were plenty of stray bullets, not to mention pieces of shrapnel and bits of high explosive shells, that might have reached the crawling lad.

"Hit? No, not yet," answered Jimmy. "I'm going to try, if it's safe, to make a little better progress than this, though. This is too slow. Poor Iggy may be dead before we get to him."

"Probably is," commented Roger.

"Oh, can the gloomy stuff!" snapped Jimmy. Afterward he admitted that his nerves were pretty well strained. In fact that was the condition of all of them. "You're almost as bad as Franz," went on Jimmy.

"Well, I don't want to be too hopeful," returned Roger. "But what are you going to do, anyhow?"

"This," answered his chum. He drew his rifle up close beside him, took off his tin hat, stuck it on the end of his bayonet, and cautiously raised it well above the ground. It received no bullets, as might have been expected.

"Come on, we can run for it!" cried Jimmy.

"What makes you think so?" asked his chum. "Didn't the lieutenant tell us to lie on our faces?"

"Yes, but that was before the fighting ceased in front of us. Fritz is having all he can attend to on either wing of our advance, and, for the time being we're not being molested. If the Huns were in any strength directly ahead of us, or to our rear as we are now, that tin helmet would look like a sieve by this time. It's safe enough to get up and run for it. And we've got to hustle if we want to save Iggy."

"All right, just as you say!" murmured Roger, as he began to rise.
It was not without a natural feeling of timidity that he cautiously
elevated himself first to his knees and then to his feet. As for
Jimmy, he had impulsively stood upright.

"Come on!" he yelled above the din of battle. "Come on!"

He started on a run over the shell-torn ground, with what remained of the barbed wire entanglements here and there.

"I'm coming!" answered Roger.

He expected any moment to receive a bullet, or to be utterly blasted from the earth by some terrible shell explosion. And Jimmy confessed, later, that he felt the same fear. But these fears did not hold back the Khaki Boys from continuing on to the rescue of their comrade—if he was in a condition to be rescued.

"Where's the place?" cried Roger to his chum, when they had covered several yards in a hasty rush toward the rear.

"Must be somewhere around here," answered Jimmy, looking about him. That part of No Man's Land where they then were, seemingly was deserted by all save the dead. If there had been any injured they had been taken well back behind the lines by stretcher bearers.

For a time Roger and Jimmy feared they might be considered deserters, coming toward the rear as they were doing, and away from the fighting, and aside from mere scratches neither of them showing any wounds. Though if they had been hurt that would have been an excuse for making a retreat.

But no one observed the two—there was no one to observe them, in fact. They were some distance from their own trenches, and immediately back of them—toward the German lines—there had been a division in the fighting, so that the battle waged on either wing, as it were.

"Look in all the shell holes!" directed Jimmy. "The shell burst right in front, or to one side of poor Iggy. He was blown into a shell hole, of that I'm pretty sure."

"There's a hole—a big one, too," said Roger. "But there's no one in it—only dead!" and he turned away, for some of those dead were comrades who, the night before, had been in the trenches with him and his chums.

But the Khaki Boys were hardened to scenes like this now. Too many times had they seen the dead and dying. There was no time to nurse one's feelings.

"Come on! Come on!" cried Jimmy feverishly. "We've got to be quick!
Iggy may bleed to death if he's hurt anything like I think he is."

"Yes, and this place may be a regular lead hail storm, soon," added Roger. "I can't see why our company was held up! Why couldn't we keep on giving the Huns what they deserve?"

"Orders are orders, my boy, we learned that long ago. And when the lieut. wouldn't let us go on, there must be some reason for it. I'm just as anxious to give Fritz his medicine as anyone. Hello, there! Did you hear that queer noise!"

"Yes. Sounded like a groan. Listen!"

The tide of battle was away from them now, and they were able, above the distant roar, to hear ordinary sounds, which had not been the case when the attack started. The sun was well up now, and the day gave promise of being a fine one—hot, too. And on such a scene the sun shone! Death and devastation brought on by human beasts!

"There it is again!" cried Roger, "It sure was a groan."

"Somebody around here is alive, at any rate," said Jimmy.

There were a number of terribly mangled bodies