AS Tom and his two companions turned from their sad task with one last lingering look at the rough grave wherein lay the body of the brave man who had been their friend and advisor, as well as their superior officer, they became aware for the first time that the advance contingent of Engineers had progressed to that point on the edge of the wood, working frantically in the felling of trees and the repairing of the roads and ground over which the day’s battle had raged, to make passageway for the ambulances to carry away the wounded, for the trucks bearing food and munitions, for the heavy and light artillery, the tanks and all the other vast and inevitable retinue of an army advancing in successful combat with an enemy. From these men of the Engineer Corps the lads learned that the combined American and French attack upon the west leg of the salient, launched simultaneously with their own assault northward, had been attended with the same success; while vague messages also repeated to them from around on the north of the huge bulge, where the French were pushing southward with an irresistible weight, indicated that swiftly and surely Allied strategy was vindicating itself in a persistent closing of a great pincers-like movement which threatened soon to entirely cut off thousands upon thousands of Germans from their main army, now in retreat. For they were in momentary danger of being trapped in a veritable pocket of annihilation by this quick closing-in process. The great question now was how rapidly these divisions could follow in the retreat, and whether or not the Americans could, or under present plans intended, to entirely cut off their avenue of escape before they could emerge from that desperate position. Already in the distance, over the ground which the Engineers had prepared, they could hear their own artillery rumbling forward, seeking placement for the tremendous bombardment that soon would be resumed. For the present, though, there was a comparative quiet and silence that seemed ominous. The boys expected it to be broken at any moment by a tremendous roar of guns, with their accompanying flash of exploding shells. Their nerves were taut in subconscious anticipation of it. Yet nothing happened, and as though they, too, were under orders not to awaken the night, they picked their way cautiously back toward where their own company had halted in the attack, speaking only infrequently, and then in hushed whispers. It was Ollie, walking between Tom and George Harper, who suddenly laid a detaining hand upon the arm of both. They looked at him questioningly in the almost unbroken gloom of the night, but they could see dimly that he was peering forward, and trained by this time to the constant vigil of warfare, they followed his gaze without a spoken word.