And in the black bed of the roots lay darkling a little pool of water.

The girl's eyes unclosed on his. Her face and lips were dripping under the sopping, icy sponge of green moss with which he was bathing her and washing out her mouth and tongue.

Into her throat he squeezed the water, drop by drop only.

It was late in the afternoon before he dared let her drink.

During the night she slept an hour or two, awoke to ask for water, then slept again, only to awake to the craving that he always satisfied.

Before sunrise he took his pack, took both her shoes from her feet, tore some rags from the lining of her skirt and from his own coat, and leaving her asleep, went out into the grey dusk of morning.

When he again came to the poisoned spring he unslung his pack and, holding it by both straps, dragged it through marsh grass and fern, out through the fringe of saplings, out through low scrub and brake and over moss and lichens to the edge of the precipice beyond.

And here on a scrubby bush he left fragments of their garments entangled; and with his hobnailed heels he broke crumbling edges of rock and smashed the moss and stunted growth and tore a path among the Alpine roses which clothed the chasm's treacherous edge, so that it might seem as though a heavy object had plunged down into the gulf below.

Such bowlders as he could stir from their beds and roll over he dislodged and pushed out, listening to them as they crashed downward, tearing the cliff's grassy face until, striking some lower shelf, they bounded out into space.

Now in this bruised path he stamped the imprints of her two rough shoes in moss and soil, and drove his own iron-shod feet wherever lichen or earth would retain the imprint.

All the footprints pointed one way and ended at the chasm's edge. And there, also, he left the wicker cage; and one of his pistols, too—the last and most desperate effort to deceive—for, near it, he flung the cartridge belt with its ammunition intact—on the chance that the Hun would believe the visible signs, because only a dying man would abandon such things.

For they must believe the evidence he had prepared for them—this crazed trail of two poisoned human creatures—driven by agony and madness to their own destruction.

And now, slinging on his pack, he made his way, walking backward, to the poisoned spring.

It was scarcely light, yet through the first ghostly grey of daybreak a few birds came; and he killed four with bits of rock before the little things could drink the sparkling, crystalline death that lay there silvered by the dawn.

She was still asleep when he came once more to the bed of leaves between the fallen trees. And she had not awakened when he covered his dry fire and brought to her the broth made from the birds.

There was, in his pack, a little food left. When he awakened her she smiled and strove to rise, but he took her head on his knees and fed her, holding the pannikin to her lips. And after he too had eaten he went to look into the hollow where the tree had stood; and found it brimming with water.

So he filled his bottles; then, with hands and knife, working cautiously and noiselessly he began to enlarge the basin, drawing out stones, scooping out silt and fibre.

All the morning he worked at his basin, which, fed by some deep-seated and living spring, now overflowed and trickled down into the dry gully below.

By noon he had a pool as large and deep as a bathtub; and he came and sat down beside her under the fallen mass of branches where she lay watching the water bubble up and clear itself of the clouded silt.

"You are very wonderful, Kay," she sighed, but her bruised lips smiled at him and her scarred hand crept toward him and lay in his. Seated so, he told her what he had done in the grey of morning while she slept.

And, even as he was speaking, a far voice cried through the woods—distant, sinister as the harsh scream of a hawk that has made its kill.

Then another voice shouted, hoarse with triumph; others answered, near and far; the forest was full of the heavy, ominous sounds. For the Huns were gathering in eastward from the wooded western hills, and their sustained clamour filled the air like the unclean racket of vultures sighting abomination and eager to feed.

McKay laid his loaded pistol beside him.

"Dear Yellow-hair," he whispered.

She smiled up at him. "If they think we died there on the edge of the precipice, then you and I should live.... If they doubt it they will come back through these woods.... And it isn't likely that we shall live very long."

"I know," she said. And laid her other hand in his—a gesture of utter trust so exquisite that, for a moment, tears blinded him, and all the forest wavered grotesquely before his desperately fixed gaze. And presently, within the field of his vision, something moved—a man going westward among the trees his rifle slung over his shoulder. And there were others, too, plodding stolidly back toward the western forests of Les Errues—forms half-seen between trees, none near, and only two who passed within hearing, the trample of their heavy feet loud among the fallen leaves, their guttural voices distinct. And, as they swung westward, rifles slung, pipes alight, and with the air of surly hunters homeward bound after a successful kill, the hunted, lying close under their roof of branches, heard them boasting of their work and of the death their quarry had died—of their agony at the spring which drove them to that death in the depths of the awful gulf beyond.

"And that," shouted one, stifling with laughter, "I should like to have seen. It is all I have to regret of this jagd-that I did not see the wilde die!"

The other Hun was less cheerful: "But what a pity to leave that roe-deer lying there. Such good meat poisoned! Schade, immer schade!—to leave good meat like that in the forest of Les Errues!"



CHAPTER XI

VIA MALA



The girl sat bolt upright on her bed of dead leaves, still confused by sleep, her ears ringing with the loud, hard voice which had awakened her to consciousness of pain and hunger once again.

Not ten feet from her, between where she lay under the branches of a fallen tree, and the edge of the precipice beyond, full in the morning sunlight stood two men in the dress of Swiss mountaineers.

One of them was reading aloud from a notebook in a slow, decisive, metallic voice; the other, swinging two dirty flags, signalled the message out across the world of mountains as it was read to him in that nasty, nasal Berlin dialect of a Prussian junker.

"In the Staubbach valley no traces of the bodies have been discovered," continued the tall, square-shouldered reader in his deliberate voice; "It is absolutely necessary that the bodies of these two American secret agents, Kay McKay and Evelyn Erith, be discovered, and all their papers, personal property, and the clothing and accoutrements belonging to them be destroyed without the slightest trace remaining.

"It is ordered also that, when discovered, their bodies be burned and the ashes reduced to powder and sown broadcast through the forest."

The voice stopped; the signaller whipped his dirty tattered flags in the sunlight for a few moments more, then ceased and stood stiffly at attention, his sun-dazzled gaze fixed on a far mountain slope where something glittered—perhaps a bit of mica, perhaps the mirror of a helio.

Presently, in the same disagreeable, distinct, nasal, and measured voice, the speaker resumed the message:

"Until last evening it has been taken for granted that the American Intelligence Officer, McKay, and his companion, Miss Erith, made insane through suffering after having drunk at a spring the water of which we had prepared for them according to plan, had either jumped or fallen from the eastward cliffs of Les Errues into the gulf through which flows the Staubbach.

"But, up to last night, my men, who descended by the Via Mala, have been unable to find the bodies of these two Americans, although there is, on the cliffs above, every evidence that they plunged down there to the valley of the brook below, which is now being searched.

"If, therefore, my men fail to discover these bodies, the alarming presumption is forced upon us that these two Americans have once more tricked us; and that they may still be hiding in the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.

"In that event proper and drastic measures will be taken, the air-squadron on the northern frontier co-operating."

The voice ceased: the flags whistled and snapped in the wind for a little while longer, then the signaller came to stiffest attention.

"Tell them we descend by the Via Mala," added the nasal voice.

The flags swung sharply into motion for a few moments more; then the Prussian officer pocketed his notebook; the signaller furled his flags; and, as they turned and strode westward along the border of the forest, the girl rose to her knees on her bed of leaves and peered after them.

What to do she scarcely knew. Her comrade, McKay, had been gone since dawn in quest of something to keep their souls and bodies en liaison—mountain hare, a squirrel perhaps, perhaps a songbird or two, or a pocketful of coral mushrooms—anything to keep them alive on that heart-breaking trail of duty at the end of which sat old man Death awaiting them, wearing a spiked helmet.

And what to do in this emergency, and in the absence of McKay, perplexed and frightened her; for her comrade's strict injunction was to remain hidden until his return; and yet one of these men now moving westward there along the forest's sunny edges had spoken of a way out and had called it the Via Mala. And that is what McKay had been looking for—a way out of the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues to the table-land below, where, through a cleft still more profound, rushed the black Staubbach under an endless mist of icy spray.

She must make up her mind quickly; the two men were drawing away from her—almost out of sight now.

On her ragged knees among the leaves she groped for his coat where he had flung it, for the weather had turned oppressive in the forest of Les Errues-and fumbling, she found his notebook and pencil, and tore out a leaf:

"Kay dear, two Prussians in Swiss mountain dress have been signalling across the knees of Thusis that our bodies have not been discovered in the ravine. They have started for the ravine by a way evidently known to them and which they speak of as the Via Mala. You told me to stay here, but I dare not let this last chance go to discover what we have been looking for—a path to the plateau below. I take my pistol and your trench-knife and I will try to leave signs for you to follow. They have started west along the cliffs and they are now nearly out of sight, so I must hurry. Yellow-hair."

This bit of paper she left on her bed of leaves and pinned it to the ground with a twig. Then she rose painfully, drew in her belt and laced her tattered shoes, and, taking the trench-knife and pistol, limped out among the trees.

The girl was half naked in her rags; her shirt scarcely hung to her shoulders, and she fastened the stag-horn buttons on her jacket. Her breeches, which left both knees bare, were of leather and held out pretty well, but the heavy wool stockings gaped, and, had it not been for the hob-nails, the soles must have fallen from her hunter's shoes.

At first she moved painfully and stiffly, but as she hurried, limping forward over the forest moss, limbs and body grew more supple and she felt less pain.

And now, not far beyond, and still full in the morning sunshine, marched the men she was following. The presumed officer strode on ahead, a high-shouldered frame of iron in his hunter's garb; the signaller with furled flags tucked under his arm clumped stolidly at his heels with the peculiar peasant gait which comes from following uneven furrows in the wake of a plow.

For ten minutes, perhaps, the two men continued on, then halted before a great mass of debris, uprooted trees, long dead, the vast, mangled roots and tops of which sprawled in every direction between masses of rock, bowlders, and an indescribable confusion of brush and upheaved earth.

Nearer and nearer crept the girl, until, lying flat behind a beech-tree, she rested within earshot—so close, indeed, that she could smell the cigarette which the officer had lighted—smell, even, the rank stench of the sulphur match.

Meanwhile the signaller had laid aside his flags and while the officer looked on he picked up a heavy sapling from among the fallen trees. Using this as a lever he rolled aside a tree-trunk, then another, and finally a bowlder.

"That will do," remarked the officer. "Take your flags and go ahead."

Then Evelyn Erith, rising cautiously to her scarred knees, saw the signaller gather up his flags and step into what apparently was the bed of the bowlder on the edge of the windfall. But it was deeper than that, for he descended to his knees, to his waist, his shoulders; and then his head disappeared into some hole which she could not see.

Now the officer who had remained, calmly smoking his cigarette, flung the remains of it over the cliff, turned, surveyed the forest behind him with minute deliberation, then stepped into the excavation down which the signaller had disappeared.

Some instinct kept the girl motionless after the man's head had vanished; minute after minute passed, and Evelyn Erith never stirred. And suddenly the officer's head and shoulders popped up from the hole and he peered back at the forest like an alarmed marmot. And the girl saw his hands resting on the edge of the hole; and the hands grasped two pistols.

Presently, apparently reassured and convinced that nobody was attempting to follow him, he slowly sank out of sight once more.

The girl waited; and while waiting she cut a long white sliver from the beech-tree and carved an arrow pointing toward the heap of debris. Then, with the keen tip of her trench-knife she scratched on the silvery bark:

"An underground way in the windfall. I have followed them. Yellow-hair."

She crept stealthily out into the sunshine through the vast abatis of the fallen trees and came to the edge of the hole. Looking down fearfully she realised at once that this was the dry, rocky stairs of some subterranean watercourse through which, in springtime, great fields of melting snow poured in torrents down the face of the precipice below.

There were no loose stones to be seen; the rocky escalier had been swept clean unnumbered ages since; but the rocks were fearfully slippery, shining with a vitreous polish where the torrents of many thousand years had worn them smooth.

And this was what they called the Via Mala!—this unsuspected and secret underground way that led, God knew how, into the terrific depths below.

There was another Via Mala: she had seen it from Mount Terrible; but it was a mountain path trodden not infrequently. This Via Mala, however, wormed its way downward into shadows. Where it led and by what perilous ways she could only imagine. And were these men perhaps, lying in ambush for her somewhere below—on the chance that they might have been seen and followed?

What would they do to her—shoot her? Push her outward from some rocky shelf into the misty gulf below? Or would they spring on her and take her alive? At the thought she chilled, knowing what a woman might expect from the Hun.

She threw a last look upward where they say God dwells somewhere behind the veil of blinding blue; then she stepped downward into the shadows.

For a rod or two she could walk upright as long as she could retain her insecure footing on the glassy, uneven floor of rock; and a vague demi-light reigned there making objects distinct enough for her to see the stalactites and stalagmites like discoloured teeth in a chevaux-de-frise.

Between these gaping fangs she crept, listening, striving to set her feet on the rocks without making any noise. But that seemed to be impossible and the rocky tunnel echoed under her footsteps, slipping, sliding, hob-nails scraping in desperate efforts not to fall.

Again and again she halted, listening fearfully, one hand crushed against her drumming heart; but she had heard no sound ahead; the men she followed must be some distance in advance; and she stole forward again, afraid, desperately crushing out the thoughts—that crowded and surged in her brain—the terrible living swarm of fears that clamoured to her of the fate of white women if captured by the things men called Boche and Hun.

And now she was obliged to stoop as the roof of the tunnel dipped lower and she could scarcely see in the increasing darkness, clearly enough to avoid the stalactites.

However, from far ahead came a glimmer; and even when she was obliged to drop to her knees and creep forward, she could still make out the patch of light, and the Via Mala again became visible with its vitreous polished floor and its stalactites and water-blunted stalagmites always threatening to trip her and transfix her.

Now, very far ahead, something moved and partly obscured the distant glimmer; and she saw, at a great distance, the two men she followed, moving in silhouette across the light. When they had disappeared she ventured to move on again. And her knees were bleeding when she crept out along a heavy shelf of rock set like a balcony on the sheer face of the cliff.

Tufts of alpine roses grew on it, and slippery lichens, and a few seedlings which next spring's torrent would wash away into the still, misty depths below.

But this shelf of rock was not all. The Via Mala could not end on the chasm's brink.

Cautiously she dragged herself out along the shadow of the cliff, listening, peering among the clefts now all abloom with alpen rosen; and saw nothing—no way forward; no steep path, hewn by man or by nature, along the face of that stupendous battlement of rock.

She lay listening. But if there was a river roaring somewhere through the gorge it was too far below her for her to hear it.

Nothing stirred there; the distant bluish parapets of rock across the ravine lay in full sunshine, but nothing moved there, neither man nor beast nor bird; and the tremendous loneliness of it all began to frighten her anew.

Yet she must go on; they had gone on; there was some hidden way. Where? Then, all in a moment, what she had noticed before, and had taken for a shadow cast by a slab of projecting rock, took the shape of a cleft in the facade of the precipice itself—an opening that led straight into the cliff.

When she dragged herself up to it she saw it had been made by man. The ancient scars of drills still marked it. Masses of rock had been blasted from it; but that must have been years ago because a deep growth of moss and lichen covered the scars and the tough stems of crag-shrubs masked every crack.

Here, too, bloomed the livid, over-rated edelweiss, dear to the maudlin and sentimental side of an otherwise wolfish race, its rather ghastly flowers starring the rocks.

As at the entrance to a tomb the girl stood straining her frightened eyes to pierce the darkness; then, feeling her way with outstretched pistol-hand, she entered.

The man-fashioned way was smooth. Or Hun or Swiss, whoever had wrought this Via Mala out of the eternal rock, had wrought accurately and well. The grade was not steep; the corridor descended by easy degrees, twisting abruptly to turn again on itself, but always leading downward in thick darkness.

No doubt that those accustomed to travel the Via Mala always carried lights; the air was clean and dry and any lighted torch could have lived in such an atmosphere. But Evelyn Erith carried no lights —had thought of none in the haste of setting out.

Years seemed to her to pass in the dreadful darkness of that descent as she felt her way downward, guided by the touch of her feet and the contact of her hand along the unseen wall.

Again and again she stopped to rest and to check the rush of sheerest terror that threatened at moments her consciousness.

There was no sound in the Via Mala. The thick darkness was like a fabric clogging her movements, swathing her, brushing across her so that she seemed actually to feel the horrible obscurity as some concrete thing impeding her and resting upon her with an increasing weight that bent her slender figure.

There was something grey ahead.... There was light—a sickly pin-point. It seemed to spread but grow duller. A pallid patch widened, became lighter again. And from an infinite distance there came a deadened roaring—the hollow menace of water rushing through depths unseen.

She stood within the shadow zone inside the tunnel and looked out upon the gorge where, level with the huge bowlders all around her, an alpine river raged and dashed against cliff and stone, flinging tons of spray into the air until the whole gorge was a driving sea of mist. Here was the floor of the canon; here was the way they had searched for. Her task was done. And now, on bleeding little feet, she must retrace her steps; the Via Mala must become the Via Dolorosa, and she must turn and ascend that Calvary to the dreadful crest.

She was very weak. Privation had sapped the young virility that had held out so long. She had not eaten for a long while—did not, indeed, crave food any longer. But her thirst raged, and she knelt at a little pool within the cavern walls and bent her bleeding mouth to the icy fillet of water. She drank little, rinsed her mouth and face and dried her lips on her sleeve. And, kneeling so, closed her eyes in utter exhaustion for a moment.

And when she opened them she found herself looking up at two men.

Before she could move one of the men kicked her pistol out of her nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the trench-knife from her convulsive grasp. Then he said in English:

"Get up." And the other, the signalman, struck her across her back with the furled flags so that she lost her balance and fell forward on her face. They got her to her feet and pushed her out among the bowlders, through the storming spray, and across the floor of the ravine into the sunlight of a mossy place all set with trees. And she saw butterflies flitting there through green branches flecked with sunshine.

The officer seated himself on a fallen tree and crossed his heavy feet on a carpet of wild flowers. She stood erect, the signaller holding her right arm above the elbow.

After the officer had leisurely lighted a cigarette he asked her who she was. She made no answer.

"You are the Erith woman, are you not?" he demanded.

She was silent.

"You Yankee slut," he added, nodding to himself and staring up into her bloodless face.

Her eyes wandered; she looked at, but scarcely saw the lovely wildflowers under foot, the butterflies flashing their burnished wings among the sunbeams.

"Drop her arm." The signaller let go and stood at attention.

"Take her knife and pistol and your flags and go across the stream to the hut."

The signaller saluted, gathered the articles mentioned, and went away in that clumping, rocking gait of the land peasant of Hundom.

"Now," said the officer, "strip off your coat!"

She turned scarlet, but he sprang to his feet and tore her coat from her. She fought off every touch; several times he struck her—once so sharply that the blood gushed from her mouth and nose; but still she fought him; and when he had completed his search of her person, he was furious, streaked with sweat and all smeared with her blood.

"Damned cat of a Yankee!" he panted, "stand there where you are or I'll blow your face off!"

But as he emptied the pockets of her coat she seized it and put it on, sobbing out her wrath and contempt of him and his threats as she covered her nearly naked body with the belted jacket and buttoned it to her throat.

He glanced at the papers she had carried, at the few poor articles that had fallen from her pockets, tossed them on the ground beside the log and resumed his seat and cigarette.

"Where's McKay?"

No answer.

"So you tricked us, eh?" he sneered. "You didn't get your rat-poison at the spring after all. The Yankees are foxes after all!" He laughed his loud, nasal, nickering laugh—"Foxes are foxes but men are men. Do you understand that, you damned vixen?"

"Will you let me kill myself?" she asked in a low but steady voice.

He seemed surprised, then realising why she had asked that mercy, showed all his teeth and smirked at her out of narrow-slitted eyes.

"Where is McKay?" he repeated.

She remained mute.

"Will you tell me where he is to be found?"

"No!"

"Will you tell me if I let you go?"

"No."

"Will you tell me if I give you back your trench-knife?"

The white agony in her face interested and amused him and he waited her reply with curiosity.

"No!" she whispered.

"Will you tell me where McKay is to be found if I promise to shoot you before—"

"No!" she burst out with a strangling sob.

He lighted another cigarette and, for a while, considered her musingly as he sat smoking. After a while he said: "You are rather dirty—all over blood. But you ought to be pretty after you're washed." Then he laughed.

The girl swayed where she stood, fighting to retain consciousness.

"How did you discover the Via Mala?" he inquired with blunt curiosity.

"You showed it to me!"

"You slut!" he said between his teeth. Then, still brutishly curious: "How did you know that spring had been poisoned? By those dead birds and animals, I suppose.... And that's what I told everybody, too. The wild things are bound to come and drink. But you and your running-mate are foxes. You made us believe you had gone over the cliff. Yes, even I believed it. It was well done—a true Yankee trick. All the same, foxes are only foxes after all. And here you are."

He got up; she shrank back, and he began to laugh at her.

"Foxes are only foxes, my pretty, dirty one!—but men are men, and a Prussian is a super-man. You had forgotten that, hadn't you, little Yankee?"

He came nearer. She sprang aside and past him and ran for the river; but he caught her at the edge of a black pool that whirled and flung sticky chunks of foam over the bowlders. For a while they fought there in silence, then he said, breathing heavily, "A fox can't drown. Didn't you know that, little fool?"

Her strength was ebbing. He forced her back to the glade and stood there holding her, his inflamed face a sneering, leering mask for the hot hell that her nearness and resistance had awakened in him. Suddenly, still holding her, he jerked his head aside and stared behind him. Then he pushed her violently from him, clutched at his holster, and started to run. And a pistol cracked and he pitched forward across the log upon which he had sat, and lay so, dripping dark blood, and fouling the wild-flowers with the flow.

"Kay!" she said in a weak voice.

McKay, his pack strapped to his back, his blood-shot eyes brilliant in his haggard visage, ran forward and bent over the thing. Then he shot him again, behind the ear.

The rage of the river drowned the sound of the shots; the man in the hut across the stream did not come to the door. But McKay caught sight of the shack; his fierce eyes questioned the girl, and she nodded.

He crossed the stream, leaping from bowlder to bowlder, and she saw him run up to the door of the hut, level his weapon, then enter. She could not hear the shots; she waited, half-dead, until he came out again, reloading his pistol.

She struggled desperately to retain her senses—to fight off the deadly faintness that assailed her. She could scarcely see him as he came swiftly toward her—she put out her arms blindly, felt his fierce clasp envelop her, passed so into blessed unconsciousness.

A drop or two of almost scalding broth aroused her. He held her in his arms and fed her—not much—and then let her stretch out on the sun-hot moss again.

Before sunset he awakened her again, and he fed her—more this time.

Afterward she lay on the moss with her golden-brown eyes partly open. And he had constructed a sponge of clean, velvety moss, and with this he washed her swollen mouth and bruised cheek, and her eyes and throat and hands and feet.

After the sun went down she slept again: and he stretched out beside her, one arm under her head and about her neck.

Moonlight pierced the foliage, silvering everything and inlaying the earth with the delicate tracery of branch and leaf.

Moonlight still silvered her face when she awoke. After a while the shadow slipped from his face, too.

"Kay?" she whispered.

"Yes, Yellow-hair."

And, after a little while she turned her face to his and her lips rested on his.

Lying so, unstirring, she fell asleep once more.



CHAPTER XII

THE GREAT SECRET



All that morning American infantry had been passing through Delle over the Belfort road. The sun of noon saw no end to them.

The endless column of shadows, keeping pace with them, lengthened with the afternoon along their lengthening line.

Now and then John Recklow opened the heavy wooden door in his garden wall and watched them until duty called him to his telephone or to his room where maps and papers littered the long table. But he always returned to the door in the garden wall when duty permitted and leaned at ease there, smoking his pipe, keen-eyed, impassive, gazing on the unbroken line of young men—men of his own race, sun-scorched, dusty, swinging along the Belfort road, their right elbows brushing Switzerland, their high sun-reddened pillar of dust drifting almost into Germany, and their heavy tread thundering through that artery of France like the prophetic pulse of victory.

A rich September sunset light streamed over them; like a moving shaft of divine fire the ruddy dust marched with them upon their right hand; legions of avenging shadows led them forward where, for nearly half a century beyond the barriers of purple hills, naked and shackled, the martyr-daughters of the Motherland stood waiting—Alsace and Lorraine.

"We are on our way!" laughed the Yankee bugles.

The Fortress of Metz growled "Nein!"

Recklow went back to his telephone. For a long while he remained there very busy with Belfort and Verdun. When again he returned to the green door in his garden wall, the Yankee infantry had passed; and of their passing there remained no trace save for the smouldering pillar of fire towering now higher than the eastern horizon and leagthened to a wall that ran away into the north as far as the eye could see.

His cats had come out into the garden for "the cats' hour"—that mysterious compromise between day and evening when all things feline awake and stretch and wander or sit motionless, alert, listening to occult things. And in the enchantment of that lovely liaison which links day and night—when the gold and rose soften to mauve as the first star is born—John Recklow raised his quiet eyes and saw two dead souls come into his garden by the little door in the wall.

"Is it you, Kay McKay?" he said at last.

But the shock of the encounter still fettered him so that he walked very slowly to the woman who was now moving toward him across the grass.

"Evelyn Erith," he said, taking her thin hands in his own, which were trembling now.

"It's a year," he complained unsteadily.

"More than a year," said McKay in his dead voice.

With his left hand, then, John Recklow took McKay's gaunt hand, and stood so, mute, looking at him and at the girl beside him.

"God!" he said blankly. Then, with no emphasis: "It's rather more than a year!... They sent me two fire-charred skulls—the head of a man and the head of a woman.... That was a year ago.... After your pigeon arrived... I found the scorched skulls wrapped in a Swiss newspaper-lying inside the garden wall—over there on the grass!... And the swine had written your names on the skulls...."

Into Evelyn Erith's eyes there came a vague light—the spectre of a smile. And as Recklow looked at her he remembered the living glory she had once been; and wrath blazed wildly within him. "What have they done to you?" he asked in an unsteady voice. But McKay laid his hand on Recklow's arm:

"Nothing. It is what they have not done—fed her. That's all she needs—and sleep."

Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they also respond quickly.

"Come into the house,"

Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight colour back into her ghastly face—the face once so youthfully lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.

Candles twinkled on the little table where the girl now lay back listlessly in the depths of an armchair, her chin sunk on her breast.

Recklow sat opposite her, writing on a pad in shorthand. McKay, resting his ragged elbows on the cloth, his haggard face between both hands, went on talking in a colourless, mechanical voice which an iron will alone flogged into speech:

"Killed two of them and took their clothes and papers," he continued monotonously; "that was last August—near the end of the month.... The Boche had tens of thousands working there. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM WAS INSANE."

"What!"

"Yes, that is the way they were operating—the only way they dared operate. I think all that enormous work has been done by the insane during the last forty years. You see, the Boche have nothing to dread from the insane. Anyway the majority of them died in harness. Those who became useless—intractable or crippled—were merely returned to the asylums from which they had been drafted. And the Hun government saw to it that nobody should have access to them.

"Besides, who would believe a crazy man or woman if they babbled about the Great Secret?"

He covered his visage with his bony hands and rested so for a few moments, then, forcing himself again:

"The Hun for forty years has drafted the insane from every asylum in the Empire to do this gigantic work for him. Men, women, even children, chained, guarded, have done the physical work.... The Pyramids were builded so, they say.... And in this manner is being finished that colossal engineering work which is never spoken of among the Huns except when necessary, and which is known among them as The Great Secret.... Recklow, it was conceived as a vast engineering project forty-eight years ago—in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. It was begun that same year.... And it is practically finished. Except for one obstacle."

Recklow's lifted eyes stared at him over his pad.

"It is virtually finished," repeated McKay in his toneless, unaccented voice which carried such terrible conviction to the other man. "Forty-eight years ago the Hun planned a huge underground highway carrying four lines of railroad tracks. It was to begin east of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Zell, slant into the bowels of the earth, pass deep under the Rhine, deep under the Swiss frontier, deep, deep under Mount Terrible and under the French frontier, and emerge in France BEHIND Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun."

Recklow laid his pad on the table and looked intently at McKay. The latter said in his ghost of a voice: "You are beginning to suspect my sanity." He turned with an effort and fixed his hollow eyes on Evelyn Erith.

"We are sane," he said. "But I don't blame you, Recklow. We have lived among the mad for more than a year—among thousands and thousands and thousands of them—of men and women and even children in whose minds the light of reason had died out.... Thirty thousand dying minds in which only a dreadful twilight reigned!... I don't know how we endured it—and retained our reason.... Do you, Yellow-hair?"

The girl did not reply. He spoke to her again, then fell silent. For the girl slept, her delicate, deathly face dropped forward on her breast.

Presently McKay turned to Recklow once more; and Recklow picked up his pad with a slight shudder.

"Forty-eight years," repeated McKay—"and the work of the Hun is nearly done—a wide highway under the earth's surface flanked by four lines of rails—broad-gauge tracks—everything now working, all rolling-stock and electric engines moving smoothly and swiftly.... Two tracks carry troops; two carry ammunition and munitions. A highway a hundred feet wide runs between.

"Ten miles from the Rhine, under the earth, there is a Hun city, with a garrison of sixty thousand men!... There are other cities along the line—"

"Deep down!"

"Deep under the earth."

"There must be shafts!" said Recklow hoarsely.

"None."

"No shafts to the surface?"

"Not one."

"No pipe? No communication with the outer air?"

Then McKay's sunken eyes glittered and he stiffened up, and his wasted features seemed to shrink until the parting of his lips showed his teeth. It was a dreadful laughter—his manner, now, of expressing mirth.

"Recklow," he said, "in 1914 that vast enterprise was scheduled to be finished according to plan. With the declaration of war in August the Hun was to have blasted his way to the surface of French soil behind the barrier forts! He was prepared to do it in half an hour's time.

"Do you understand? Do you see how it was planned? For forty-eight years the Hun had been preparing to seize France and crush Europe.

"When the Hun was ready he murdered the Austrian archduke—the most convenient solution of the problem for the Hun Kaiser, who presented himself with the pretext for war by getting rid of the only Austrian with whom he couldn't do business."

Again McKay laughed, silently, showing his discoloured teeth.

"So the archduke died according to plan; and there was war—according to plan. And then, Recklow, GOD'S HAND MOVED!—very slightly—indolently—scarcely stirring at all.... A drop of icy water percolated the limestone on Mount Terrible; other drops followed; linked by these drops a thin stream crept downward in the earth along the limestone fissures, washing away glacial sands that had lodged there since time began."... He leaned forward and his brilliant, sunken eyes peered into Recklow's:

"Since 1914," he said, "the Staubbach has fallen into the bowels of the earth and the Hun has been fighting it miles under the earth's surface.

"They can't operate from the glacier on the white Shoulder of Thusis; whenever they calk it and plug it and stop it with tons of reinforced waterproof concrete—whenever on the surface of the world they dam it and turn it into new channels, it evades them. And in a new place its icy water bursts through—as though every stratum in the Alps dipped toward their underground tunnel to carry the water from the Glacier of Thusis into it!"

He clenched his wasted hands and struck the table without a sound:

"God blocks them, damn them!" he said in his ghost of a voice. "God bars the Boche! They shall not pass!"

He leaned nearer, twisting his clenched fingers together: "We saw them, Recklow. We saw the Staubbach fighting for right of way; we saw the Hun fighting the Staubbach—Darkness battling with Light!—the Hun against the Most High!—miles under the earth's crust, Recklow.... Do you believe in God?"

"Yes."

"Yes.... We saw Him at work—that young girl asleep there, and I—month after month we watched Him check and dismay the modern Pharaoh—we watched Him countermine the Nibelungen and mock their filthy Gott! And Recklow, we laughed, sometimes, where laughter among clouded minds means nothing—nothing even to the Hun—nor causes suspicion nor brings punishment other than the accustomed kick and blow which the Hun reserves for all who are helpless."... He bowed his head in his hands. "All who are weak and stricken," he whispered to himself.

Recklow said: "Did they harm—HER?" And,

McKay looked up at that, baring his teeth in a swift snarl:

"No—you see her clipped hair—and the thin body.... In her blouse she passed for a boy, unquestioned, unnoticed. There were thousands of us, you see.... Some of the insane women were badly treated—all of the younger ones.... But she and I were together.... And I had my pistol in reserve—for the crisis!—always in reserve—always ready for her." Recklow nodded. McKay went on:

"We fought the Staubbach in shifts.... And all through those months of autumn and winter there was no chance for us to get away. It is not cold under ground.... It was like a dark, thick dream. We tried to realise that war was going on, over our heads, up above us somewhere in daylight—where there was sun and where stars were.... It was like a thick dream, Recklow. The stars seemed very far...."

"You had passed as inmates of some German asylum?"

"We had killed two landwehr on the Staubbach. That was a year ago last August—" He looked at the sleeping girl beside him: "My little comrade and I undressed the swine and took their uniforms.... After a long while—privations had made us both light-headed I think—we saw a camp of the insane in the woods—a fresh relay from Mulhaus. We talked with their guards—being in Landwehr uniform it was easy. The insane were clothed like miners. Late that night we exchanged clothes with two poor, demented creatures who retained sufficient reason, however, to realise that our uniforms meant freedom.... They crept away into the forest. We remained.... And marched at dawn—straight into the jaws of the Great Secret!"

Recklow had remained at the telephone until dawn. And now Belfort was through with him and Verdun understood, and Paris had relayed to Headquarters and Headquarters had instructed John Recklow.

Before Recklow went to bed he parted his curtain and looked out at the misty dawn.

In the silvery dusk a cock-pheasant was crowing somewhere on a wheat-field's edge. A barnyard chanticleer replied. Clear and truculent rang out the challenge of the Gallic cock in the dawn, warning his wild neighbour to keep to the wilds. So the French trumpets challenge the shrill, barbaric fanfares of the Hun, warning him back into the dull and shadowy wilderness from whence he ventured.

Recklow was awake, dressed, and had breakfasted by eight o'clock.

McKay, in his little chamber on the right, still slept. Evelyn Erith, in the tiny room on the left, slept deeply.

So Recklow went out into his garden, opened the wooden door in the wall, seated himself, lighted his pipe, and watched the Belfort road.

About ten o'clock two American electricians came buzzing up on motor-cycles. Recklow got up and went to the door in the wall as they dismounted. After a short, whispered consultation they guided their machines into the garden, through a paved alley to a tiled shed. Then they went on duty, one taking the telephone in Recklow's private office, the other busying himself with the clutter of maps and papers. And Recklow went back to the door in the wall. About eleven an American motor ambulance drove up. A nurse carrying her luggage got out, and Recklow met her.

After another whispered consultation he picked up the nurse's luggage, led her into the house, and showed her all over it.

"I don't know," he said, "whether they are too badly done in to travel as far as Belfort. There'll be a Yankee regimental doctor here to-day or to-morrow. He'll know. So let 'em sleep. And you can give them the once-over when they wake, and then get busy in the kitchen."

The girl laughed and nodded.

"Be good to them," added Recklow. "They'll get crosses and legions enough but they've got to be well to enjoy them. So keep them in bed until the doctor comes. There are bathrobes and things in my room."

"I understand, sir."

"Right," said Recklow briefly. Then he went to his room, changed his clothes to knickerbockers, his shoes for heavier ones, picked up a rifle, a pair of field-glasses and a gas-mask, slung a satchel containing three days' rations over his powerful shoulders, and went out into the street.

Six Alpinists awaited him. They were peculiarly accoutred, every soldier carrying, beside rifle, haversack and blanket, a flat tank strapped on his back like a knapsack.

Their sergeant saluted; he and Recklow exchanged a few words in whispers. Then Recklow strode away down the Belfort road. And the oddly accoutred Alpinists followed him, their steel-shod soles ringing on the pavement.

Where the Swiss wire bars the frontier no sentinels paced that noon. This was odd. Stranger still, a gap had been cut in the wire.

And into this gap strode Recklow, and behind him trotted the nimble blue-devils, single file; and they and their leader took the ascending path which leads to the Calvary on Mount Terrible.

Standing that same afternoon on the rocks of that grim Calvary, with the weatherbeaten figure of Christ towering on the black cross above them, Recklow and his men gazed out across the tumbled mountains to where the White Shoulder of Thusis gleamed in the sun.

Through their glasses they could sweep the glacier to its terminal moraine. That was not very far away, and the "dust" from the Staubbach could be distinguished drifting out of the green ravine like a windy cloud of steam.

"Allons," said Recklow briefly.

They slept that night in their blankets so close to the Staubbach that its wet, silvery dust powdered them, at times, like snow.

At dawn they were afield, running everywhere over the rocks, searching hollows, probing chasms, creeping into ravines, and always following the torrent which dashed whitely through its limestone canon.

Perhaps the Alpine eagles saw them. But no Swiss patrol disturbed them. Perhaps there was fear somewhere in the Alpine Confederation—fear in high places.

Also it is possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years. However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols bothered the blue devils and Mr. Recklow.

And they continued to swarm over the Alpine landscape at their own convenience; on the Calvary of Mount Terrible they erected a dwarf wireless station; a hundred men came from Delle with radio- impedimenta; six American airmen arrived; American planes circled over the northern border, driving off the squadrilla of Count von Dresslin.

And on the second night Recklow's men built fires and camped carelessly beside the brilliant warmth, while "mountain mutton" frizzled on pointed sticks and every blue-devil smacked his lips.

On the early morning of the third day Recklow discovered what he had been looking for. And an Alpinist signalled an airplane over Mount Terrible from the White Shoulder of Thusis. Two hours later a full battalion of Alpinists crossed Mount Terrible by the Neck of Woods and exchanged flag signals with Recklow's men. They had with them a great number of cylinders, coils of wire, and other curious-looking paraphernalia.

When they came up to the ravine where Recklow and his men were grouped they immediately became very busy with their cylinders, wires, hose-pipes, and other instruments.

It had been a beautiful ravine where Recklow now stood—was still as pretty and picturesque as a dry water-course can be with the bowlders bleaching in the sun and green things beginning to grow in what had been the bed of a rushing stream. For, just above this ravine, the water ended: the Staubbach poured its full, icy volume directly downward into the bowels of the earth with a hollow, thundering sound; the bed of the stream was bone-dry beyond. And now the blue-devils were unreeling wire and plumbing this chasm into which the Staubbach thundered. On the end of the wire was an electric bulb, lighted. Recklow watched the wire unreeling, foot after foot, rod after rod, plumbing the dark burrow of the Boche deep down under the earth.

And, when they were ready, guided by the wire, they lowered the curious hose-pipe, down, down, ever down, attaching reel after reel to the lengthening tube until Recklow checked them and turned to watch the men who stood feeding the wire into the roaring chasm.

Suddenly, as he watched, the flowing wire stopped, swayed violently sideways, then was jerked out of the men's hands.

"The Boche bites!" they shouted. Their officer, reading the measured wire, turned to Recklow and gave him the depth; the hose-pipe ran out sixty yards; then Recklow checked it and put on his gasmask as the whistle signal rang out along the mountain.

Now, everywhere, masked figures swarmed over the place; cylinders were laid, hose attached, other batteries of cylinders were ranged in line and connections laid ready for instant adjustment.

Recklow raised his right arm, then struck it downward violently. The gas from the first cylinder went whistling into the hose.

At the same time an unmasked figure on the cliff above began talking by American radiophone with three planes half a mile in the air above him. He spoke naturally, easily, into a transmitter to which no wires were attached.

He was still talking when Recklow arrived at his side from the ravine below, tore off his gas-mask, and put on a peculiar helmet. Then, taking the transmitter into his right hand: "Do you get them?" he demanded of his companion, an American lieutenant.

"No trouble, sir. No need to raise one's voice. They hear quite perfectly, and one hears them, sir."

Then Recklow spoke to the three airplanes circling like hawks in the sky overhead; and one by one the observers in each machine replied in English, their voices easily audible.

"I want Zell watched from the air," said Recklow. "The Boche have an underground tunnel beginning near Zell, continuing under Mount Terrible to the French frontier.

"I want the Zell end of the tunnel kept under observation.

"Send our planes in from Belfort, Toul, Nancy, and Verdun.

"And keep me informed whether railroad trains, camions, or cavalry come out. And whether indeed any living thing emerges from the end of the tunnel near Zell.

"Because we are gassing the tunnel from this ravine. And I think we've got the dirty vermin wholesale!"

At sundown a plane appeared overhead and talked to Recklow:

"One railroad train came out. But it was manned by dead men, I think, because it crashed into the rear masonry of the station and was smashed."

"Nothing else, living or dead, came out?"

"Nothing, sir. There is wild excitement at Zell. Troops at the tunnel's mouth wear gas-masks. We bombed them and raked them. The Boche planes took the air but two crashed and the rest turned east."

"You saw no living creature escape from the Zell end of the tunnel?"

"Not a soul, sir."

Recklow turned to the group of officers around him:

"I guess they're done for," he said. "That fumigation cleaned out the vermin. But keep the tunnel pumped full of gas.... Au revoir, messieurs!"

On his way back across Mount Terrible he encountered a relay of Alpinists bringing fresh gas. tanks; and he laughed and saluted their officers. "This poor old world needs a de-lousing," he said. "Foch will attend to it up here on top of the world. See that you gentlemen, purge her interior!"

The nurse opened the door and looked into the garden. Then she closed the door, gently, and went back into the house.

For she had seen a slim girl with short yellow hair curling all over her head, and that head was resting on a young man's shoulder.

It seemed unnecessary, too, because there were two steamer chairs under the rose arbor, side by side, and pillows sufficient for each.

And why a slim young girl should prefer to pillow her curly, yellow head upon the shoulder of a rather gaunt young man—the shoulder, presumably, being bony and uncomfortable—she alone could explain perhaps.

The young man did not appear to be inconvenienced. He caressed her hair while he spoke:

"From here to Belfort," he was saying in his musing, agreeable voice, "and from Belfort to Paris; and from Paris to London, and from London to Strathlone Head, and from Strathlone Head to Glenark Cliffs, and from Glenark Cliffs to Isla Water, and from Isla Water—to our home! Our home, Yellow-hair," he repeated. "What do you think of that?"

"I think you have forgotten the parson's house on the way. You are immoral, Kay."

"Can't a Yank sky-pilot in Paris—"

"Darling, I must have some clothing!"

"Can't you get things in Paris?"

"Yes, if you'll wait and not become impatient for Isla. And I warn you, Kay, I simply won't marry you until I have some decent gowns and underwear."

"You don't care for me as much as I do for you," he murmured in lazy happiness.

"I care for you more. I've cared for you longer, too."

"How long, Yellow-hair?"

"Ever—ever since your head lay on my knees in my car a year ago last winter! You know it, too," she added. "You are a spoiled young man. I shall not tell you again how much I care for you!"

"Say 'love',' Yellow-hair," he coaxed.

"No!"

"Don't you?"

"Don't I what?"

"Love me?"

"Yes."

"Then won't you say it?"

She laughed contentedly. Then her warm head moved a little on his shoulder; he looked down; lightly their lips joined.

"Kay—my dear—dear Kay," she whispered.

"There's somebody opening the garden door," she said under her breath, and sat bolt upright.

McKay also sat up on his steamer chair.

"Oh!" he cried gaily, "hello, Recklow! Where on earth have you been for three days?"

Recklow came into the rose arbour. The blossoms were gone from the vines but it was a fragrant, golden place into which the September sun filtered. He lifted Miss Erith's hand and kissed it gravely. "How are you?" he inquired.

"Perfectly well, and ready for Paris!" she said smilingly.

Recklow shook hands with McKay.

"You'll want a furlough, too," he remarked. "I'll fix it. How do you feel, McKay?"

"All right. Has anything come out of our report on the Great Secret?"

Recklow seated himself and they listened in strained silence to his careful report. Once Evelyn caught her breath and Recklow paused and turned to look at her.

"There were thousands and thousands of insane down there under the earth," she said pitifully.

"Yes," he nodded.

"Did—did they all die?"

"Are the insane not better dead, Miss Erith?" he asked calmly.... And continued his recital.

That evening there was a full moon over the garden. Recklow lingered with them after dinner for a while, discussing the beginning of the end of all things Hunnish. For Foch was striking at last; Pershing was moving; Haig, Gouraud, Petain, all were marching toward the field of Armageddon. They conversed for a while, the men smoking. Then Recklow went away across the dewy grass, followed by two frisky and factious cats.

But when McKay took Miss Erith's head into his arms the girl's eyes were wet.

"The way they died down there—I can't help it, Kay," she faltered. "Oh, Kay, Kay, you must love me enough to make me forget—forget—"

And she clasped his neck tightly in both her arms.

THE END