Uncle Sam's Boys on Field Duty. Hancock Harrie Irving

shoes to ease his aching feet, and had tucked them in at the bottom of his blanket.

      "It's a shabby trick to play on a good fellow," grinned the soldier boy, "but this is war."

      For the last time Hal crept back. Now an even greater task confronted him, and that was how to get away with all the outpost loot he had captured.

      By making three stealthy trips, Private Overton at last succeeded in getting all the loot in safety to a point more than one hundred yards from the outpost.

      "Now, it's time to drop nonsense for real business," decided the young scout.

      Ten minutes later he had located the main camp, and that without falling into the hands of either of the two C Company sentries whom he was compelled to pass in the black night.

      Then back to the hidden loot the young soldier returned.

      "Whew, but that's going to be a pack!" muttered Hal, gazing at it almost ruefully. "However, I've got to take it. I won't leave a blessed thing behind."

      The canteens Overton threw over his shoulders, so that he had one on each side, in addition to his own, which hung at his left hip. The corporal's shoes he tied to his belt. It was the bunching of the four service rifles, with their weight of more than forty pounds, that gave him his real trouble. But at last he had the four pieces lashed together and started.

      "I've yet got to look out that I don't run into any scouts of the enemy," thought the soldier boy half ruefully. "Whew, what a break it would be to be picked up with all this loot!"

      It was a welcome sound indeed when, at last, the young scout heard, near the spot where he had left his own party, the almost whispered challenge:

      "Halt! Who's there?"