fragments narrowly missed him.

Don Hale was puffing harder and harder with the strenuous exertion; his heart seemed to beat with alarming force; a painful dryness had come into his throat. The boy could see Dunstan on his left; Chase on his right; both, like himself, striving with all the energy and determination they possessed to get out of the danger zone.

Crack! Crack!

Suddenly Chase tripped and went sprawling—down he was on his knees, his arms outstretched before him.

Don Hale groaned. To his excited, overwrought imagination, one of them at least had ended his part in the game of life and death.

Notwithstanding an almost irresistible impulse to keep on running, a desperate, flying leap sent him to the other side.

"Chase—Chase!" he gasped, hoarsely. "Chase!"

The other was beginning to scramble up.

"Are you hit, old man?" To Don's relief the other shook his head.

He seized Manning's arm, and, with that strength and vigor often given to those who find themselves in terrible danger, dragged him to his feet. The tension created by that momentary stoppage brought beads of cold, clammy perspiration to the faces of each.

Dunstan had halted and was yelling frantically for them to come on. A stream of bullets hummed past; a single shot struck the ground ahead.

The race was on once more.

It seemed almost miraculous that none of the runners was brought down during the fusillade that immediately followed. Don Hale could scarcely believe it possible. Renewed hope sprang into his heart; renewed strength came into his body.

A dozen yards only—ten—five.

Breathless, almost exhausted, the aviator's son fairly flung himself across the top of the ridge and down on the other side, and as he did so:

Zip! Zip! Crack!

A branch of a sapling, cut cleanly off by a bullet, came tumbling at his feet.

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