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Updated: May 17, 2025
Before the candle had been put out Ruth had seen him pick up two gas-masks, and he carried these as they stumbled along the duckboards toward the next cross trench. "Halt!" A sibilant whisper. Sergeant Tremp muttered something in reply.
Major Marchand took her hand and led her quietly away. The earth about them looked gray; but the blackness of night wrapped them around. There was not a light to be seen. She realized more by the sense of locality she possessed than by aught else that they were on the lowland far beyond that ridge through which they had first tunneled after Sergeant Tremp had joined them.
At this time in the year the swamp water is as cold as the grave." Without further question the girl stepped into the rubber suit. Sergeant Tremp helped to draw it up to her armpits, and then buckled it over her shoulders. He showed her, too, how to pull in the belt. She immediately felt that she would be dry and warm in the suit.
"Yes," she breathed. Tremp seemed to melt into the darkness. Major Marchand turned at an abrupt angle and Ruth followed him as he had desired. She knew they were passing through a very narrow passage. The earth was scraped from the walls by their elbows and rattled down upon their feet. The passage rose slightly.
But to Ruth Fielding it seemed a fearful place in which to sleep, and eat, and loaf away the long hours of trench duty. "All ready for us, Tremp?" asked Major Marchand of the man who had led them to this spot. The American girl now saw that the man was a squat Frenchman in the horizon blue uniform of the infantry and with the bars of a sergeant.
The bottom of the trench they had just left the very front line was all of thirty feet in depth at this point. This narrow tunnel was thrust out into No Man's Land and led to a listening post. At least, so she supposed, and she was not mistaken. Nor was she mistaken in her supposition that Tremp was no longer with them. He was not prepared to cross the Savoie morass.
Little wonder in that. The French had dug these trenches and Sergeant Tremp knew them as he did the paths in the environs of his native village. At a dark corner he clucked with his tongue and brought them to a halt. "This is it, Major," he whispered, after peering about. "Good!" ejaculated the officer softly. "Let me step ahead, Mademoiselle. Cling to my belt behind. Try to walk in my footsteps."
His brother-in-law, Leonard Tremp, wrote to him from Bern: "As you value your life, take care you go not to Baden; for no safe-conduct will be observed in your case; that I know." Can the government of Zurich be blamed for not wantonly exposing the man, in whose existence the entire development of its political and religious life was closely bound up?
Now allons!" Tremp slid the plank back, and they filed out into the trench after he had looked both ways to make sure that the coast was clear. Ruth wondered what would happen to them if they were caught by an American patrol? Perhaps be apprehended for the spies they were only the Americans would think them spying for the Huns! The major's hands were full.
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