"Foldeen!" he shouted shrilly, and then bent all his powers of hearing for a reply. There came no answering call. The air was full of other sounds--the rattling echoes of musketry-firing and the boom of bigger guns, some far off, others seemingly near, all mingling here among the thicket recesses in a subdued, continuous clamor. Perhaps shouting was of no use. Lafe climbed up the hill a dozen yards or so, to a point where he could go no farther, and scrutinized his surroundings carefully. The impenetrable wall of foliage shut out the valley from him even more completely than when he was on the ridge. He called again and again, and explored the bushes on either side, to no purpose. Limping slowly down the track cleared by the passing rock, he continued his search to the right and left. He knew so little of how he himself had escaped death that there was nothing to help him guess how it had fared with his companion. He had not known much about this missing bandsman heretofore, save that he seemed to be the best fellow among the three or four German musicians which the band contained. The boy, like the rest, spoke and thought of all these alien comrades as "Dutchmen," and he was far from comprehending that that outlandish name "Foldeen" was only a corruption of "Valentine." But a common misfortune binds swift ties, and Lafe, as he kept up his quest, began to think of Schell quite affectionately. He recalled how good-tempered he had always been; how he alone had made jokes on the long march, when the cold and driving rain had soured every one else, and empty stomachs grumbled to keep company with aching bones. Reflecting upon this, Lafe realized that he was very fond of the "Dutchman," and would be in despair if he had come to grief. "Foldeen!" he yelled out again. "Sh! sh! geeb guiet!" came a guttural reply, from somewhere near by. The boy's heart lightened on the instant. He looked hastily about him with a cheerful eye, trying to trace the direction of the voice. "Where are you?" he demanded, in a lower tone. For answer, the blue-coated German rose from a cover of brush, away down the hill, and beckoned him, enforcing at the same time by emphatic gestures the importance of coming noiselessly. Lafe stole down furtively, and in a minute was bending close beside Foldeen in shrubby shelter. "Get hurt any?" Lafe asked, subduing his voice almost to a whisper in deference to the other's visible anxiety. Foldeen shook his head. "It is much worse," he murmured back. "I have my flute lost." The boy could not but smile. "We can thank our stars we weren't both smashed to atoms," he observed. "Sh-h! don't talk!" Foldeen adjured him, and indicated with a sidewise nod of the head that special reasons for silence lay in that direction.