The idea seemed a good one and they fell to, hewing out a ditch with a couple of sticks. It was a very crude piece of engineering, as Roscoe observed, and they were embarrassed in their work by the gathering darkness, but at length they succeeded, by dint of jabbing and plowing and lifting the earth out in handfuls, in excavating a little gully through the rising bank so that the liquid would flow off and down the rocky decline beyond at a safe distance from the stream. For upwards of an hour they remained close by, until the hogsheads had run dry, and then they set out through the woods for the captured village. CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE GUN PIT "I think the best way to get into the village," said Roscoe, "is to follow the edge of the wood around. That'll bring us to the by-path that runs into the main road. They've got the woods pretty well cleared out over that way. There's a road a little north of here and I think the Germans have withdrawn across that. What do you say?" "You know more about it than I do," said Tom. "I followed the brook up. It's pretty bad in some places." "There's only two of us," said Roscoe, "and you've no rifle. Safety first." "I suppose there's a lot of places they could hide along the brook; the brush is pretty thick all the way up," Tom added. Roscoe whistled softly in indecision. "I like the open better," said he. "I guess so," Tom agreed, "when there's only two of us." "There's three of us, though," said Roscoe, "and _Tommy_ here likes the open better. I'd toss up a coin only with these blamed French coins you can't tell which is heads and which is tails." Roscoe was right about the Germans having withdrawn beyond the road north of the woods. Whether he was right about its being safer to go around the edge of the forest remained to be determined. This wood, in which they had passed the day, extended north of the village (see map) and thinned out upon the eastern side so that one following the eastern edge would emerge from the wood a little east of the main settlement. Here was the by-path which Roscoe had mentioned, and which led down into the main road. Running east and west across the northern extremity of the woods was a road, and the Germans, driven first from their trenches, then out of the village, and then out of the woods, were establishing their lines north of this road. If the boys had followed the brook down they would have reached the village by a much shorter course, but Roscoe preferred the open country where they could keep a better lookout. Whether his decision was a wise one, we shall see. [Illustration: SHOWING PATH TAKEN BY TOM AND ROSCOE THROUGH THE WOODS] Leaving the scene of their "complete annihilation of the crack poison division," as Roscoe said, they followed the ragged edge of the woods where it thinned out to the north, verging around with it until they were headed in a southerly direction.