The sentence was never finished. There was a sudden sharp crackling, a gasp of exclamations from the throng, and a shower of sparks shot into the air from where the severed cable end lay upon the ground. The Germans had turned on the current, but they had turned it on a moment too late! The narrow margin by which a terrible tragedy had been averted was obvious to all. They stood about, awed and silent, watching the deadly current expend itself in a harmless sputter. The general himself was a man of few words. He summoned the lads to him. “Young men,” he said, “I congratulate and thank you. You have saved an army. It will not be forgotten.” And the three youths flushed deeply as a lusty cheer went up from the men gathered about them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIII CAPTURED AS the three lads, hoping for a snatch of sleep before the orders came for a renewal of the battle, settled into their blankets in a dug-out which only forty-eight hours before had been occupied by Germans who held forth there in that sublime assurance born of four years of uninterrupted and practically unchallenged possession, Ollie Ogden chuckled audibly. “What’s the matter now?” demanded George Harper, none too graciously, for already he had drowsed, and the injection of humor, particularly when the cause was unknown, was not altogether pleasant. Tom, too, looked sharply at his friend, but with other reason. For an instant he feared that the low laugh was the first hysteria which is the forerunner of one phase of shell shock—that dreaded punishment when taut nerves break, the mind snaps, and a strong man temporarily is transformed into a cowering, jabbering, pitiful hulk of his former self, actuated by one thought, escape from the thing that caused his mental wreck. But Tom’s one quick glance was sufficient to assure him. To be sure Ollie showed the same evidences of fatigue as did the others; but all three had built up for themselves, in the sports and athletics at Brighton, constitutions which it would require far more than their experiences of the last twenty-four hours to break, harrowing as those experiences had been, and Ollie was only giving vent to amusement at a sudden thought that had flashed through his mind. “What are you giggling at?” Harper demanded again, now only half awake. “Remember that relay race at Brighton,” Ollie answered, “when you, Tom, ran the first mile, George the second, and I was to finish with the third?” “Aw, can’t you ever forget that?” Harper interrupted, peevishly. “What’s the idea of rehashing that thing again?” he added, suddenly forgetting his sleepiness. “I’m not rehashing it,” Ollie assured him, in soothing tones. “I was just thinking about it, that was all.”