“Then one of the women captains stumbled forward and made the sign of the cross. It is the voiceless battle cry of the Avengers and signs supreme sacrifice for all the Front means. She lifted her right hand in the sweep of victory—on her wrist was bound the packet of death they carry in case of capture by the kultur beasts—and fell, for the Huns opened fire the instant they saw her gesture. “But the message had gotten over! They could charge—they must—and the cyanide would erase the intolerable memory forever! I looked at those nearest and saw they would go through with it, but men—their faces were set with the look of the face of Christ on the cross!” He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked from one American to the other. “You won’t believe it—I saw it and I cannot—but the proof is there! As the women gripped to thrust, leaning forward as if to force rebellious bodies toward that barricade, there swept down upon us from the rear or above, a sudden striding mist—a battalion of marching shadows in a blur of the old red and blue that outstripped the Avengers’ advance. There was a flash of charging steel and the waving colors of the old —nth as they swept over the untouched children into the trench. “It’s all a blur, sir, I can’t tell you clearly, but they turned their faces as they passed and—we knew our dead. You could see the women cry out and lift their arms, each to her own man as he halted an instant beside her. “Madame Arouet was sobbing as if caught by a bullet, ‘Jean—Jean!—to have seen you again! Ah, my God!’ The tall corporal, just beyond, threw herself with high piercing scream—arms outstretched—toward the smiling shadow that was passing. “The bravest man in the old —nth, where all were brave, dropped behind as he bent over the fallen captain. There was a quivering smile of recognition just as the jerking heap settled into quiet; then, as if he waited for it, a slender blur in horizon blue sprang to his side and swept forward with the Battalion—though the captain still lay where she had fallen!” Fouquet gripped his comrade, arm and crutch together, with a cry. “Did you see our brave captain salute as he passed? Joyously I shouted as I fell into step beside him, but—I dropped back—I could not keep that pace! Barres—Barres—you saw them? You must have seen them? It was the old —nth come back to save their women from the last hellish trap set by fiends! We know they had the right. This was their battleground where once before they had saved an army of France!” Lieutenant Agor was leaning across the table with staring eyes: “Then—that was what I—saw, sir?” He turned to his commander, “I told you it was like the fog blowing in off Frisco bay, and—” Captain Hailes half rose, “My lieutenant said he lost you when a mist obscured the contact platoon. He said he saw—I—thought it was shell shock—I meant to send him behind the lines—” Barres shook his head slowly as he caught Fouquet about the shoulder.