And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry's alarm, and in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives a new hope and a new reason for courage:--the grim courage of those who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on. For this is what the Huns had done--not daring to use signals visible to the Swiss patrols on nearer mountain flanks. Nailed to a tree beside the scarcely visible trail of flattened leaves--a trail more imagined and feared than actually visible--was a sheet of white paper. And on it was written in the tongue of the Hun,--and in that same barbarous script also--a message, the free translation of which was as follows: "WARNING!" The three Americans recently sent into Les Errues by the Military Intelligence Department of the United States Army now fighting in France are still at large somewhere in this forest. Two of them are operating together, the well-known escaped prisoner, Kay McKay, and the woman secret-agent, Evelyn Erith. The third American, Alexander Gray, has been wounded in the left hand by one of our riflemen, but managed to escape, and is now believed to be attempting to find and join the agents McKay and Erith. This must be prevented. All German agents now operating in Les Errues are formally instructed to track down and destroy without traces these three spies whenever and wherever encountered according to plan. It is expressly forbidden to attempt to take any one or all of these spies alive. No prisoners! No traces! Germans, do your duty! The Fatherland is in peril! (Signed) "HOCHSTIM." McKay wriggled cautiously backward from the chasm's granite edge and crawled into the thicket of alpine roses where Evelyn Erith lay. "No way out, Kay?" she asked under her breath. "No way THAT way, Yellow-hair." "Then?" "I don't--know," he said slowly. "You mean that we ought to turn back." "Yes, we ought to. The forest is narrowing very dangerously for us. It runs to a point five miles farther east, overlooking impassable gulfs.... We should be in a cul-de-sac, Yellow-hair." "I know." He mused for a few moments, cool, clear-eyed, apparently quite undisturbed by their present peril and intent only on the mission which had brought them here, and how to execute it before their unseen trackers executed them. "To turn now, and attempt to go back along this precipice, is to face every probability of meeting the men we have so far managed to avoid," he said aloud in his pleasant voice, but as though presenting the facts to himself alone. "Of course we shall account for some of the Huns; but that does not help us to win through.... Even an exchange of shots would no doubt be disastrous to our plans. We MUST keep away from them.... Otherwise we could never hope to creep into the valley alive,... Tell me, Yellow-hair, have you thought of anything new?" The girl shook her head.