They heard a whirring and drumming, and the biplane not more than fifty feet above the earth made several circles about the little wood. John saw the men in it very clearly. He could even discern the German cast of countenance where all except the one at the wheel that controlled the two rudders had thrown back their hoods and taken off their glasses. The three carried rifles which they held ready for use, in case they detected an enemy.

Whirling around like a vast primeval bird of prey the biplane began to rise, as if disappointed of a victim, and winding upward was soon above the trees. Then John heard the rapid crackle of rifles.

"Shooting at our flag again!" he exclaimed.

But the whizz of a bullet that buried itself in the earth near him told him better.

"It isn't possible that they've seen us!" he exclaimed.

"No," said Weber, "they're merely peppering the woods and vines in the hope that they'll hit a concealed enemy, if such there should be."

"That being the case," said John, "I'm going to make my body as small as possible, and push myself into the ground if I can."

He lay very close, but the rifle fire quickly passed to other portions of the wood, and then died away entirely. John straightened himself out and saw the biplane becoming smaller, as it flew off in the direction whence it had come.

"I hope you'll come to no good," he said, shaking his fist at the disappearing plane. "You've scared me half to death with your shots, and I hope that both your rudders will get out of gear and stay out of gear! I hope that the wheel controlling them will be smashed up! I hope that the top plane will crash into the bottom one! I hope that a French shell will shoot your tail off! And I hope that you'll tumble to the earth and lie there, nothing but a heap of rotting wood and rusty old metal!"

"Well done, Mr. Scott!" said Weber. "That was quite a curse, but I think it will take something more solid to disable the biplane."

"I think so too, but I've relieved my feelings, and after a man has done so he can work a lot better. What are we to look for now, Weber? We don't seem to have success in attracting anything but Germans. If Lannes is coming at all, as you think he will, he'll get a pretty late ticket of admission to our reserved section of the air."

"You must remember that the sky above us is a pretty large place, and at any rate we're a drawing power. We're always pulling something out of the ether."

"And our biggest catch is coming now! Look, Weber, look I If that isn't one of Herr Zeppelin's railroad trains of the air then I'll eat it when it gets here!"

"You're right, Mr. Scott. There the monster comes. It can't be anything but a Zeppelin! They must have one of their big sheds not far east of us."

"We'll hear its rattling soon. Like the others it will surely see our flag and make for it. But if they take a notion to shoot up the wood, as the men on that biplane did, we'd better hunt holes. A Zeppelin can carry a lot of soldiers."

The Zeppelin was not moving fast. It had none of the quick graceful movements of the aeroplanes, but came on slowly like some huge monster of the air, looking about for prey. It turned southeast for a moment or two, then some one on board saw the flag and coming back it lumbered toward the tree.

"Ugly things," said John. "Lannes and I blew up one once, and I wish I had the same chance against that fellow up there. But they're in the same puzzled state that the other fellows were. Men on both platforms are examining the flag through glasses, and the flag doesn't give a rap for them. It's standing out in the wind, now, straight and stiff. It seems to know that old Noah's ark can't make it out."

The huge Zeppelin drew its length along the grove, coming as close to the trees as it dared, then passed above, and after some circling lumbered away to the south.

"Good-bye, old Mr. Curiosity," exclaimed John. "You weren't invited here, and I don't care whether you ever come again. Besides, you're nothing but a big bluff, anyway. There's our flag, still standing straight out in the wind, so you can see every stripe on it, and yet you haven't, despite your visit, the remotest idea why it was put there!"

Weber smiled.

"They've all gone away as ignorant as they were when they came," he said, "but we must be due for a French visitor or two. After so long a run of Germans we should have Frenchmen soon."

"I begin to believe with you that Lannes will arrive some time or other. He flies fast and far and in time he must see our signal."

"I've never doubted it. Meanwhile I think I'll take a little luncheon, and I'd advise you to do the same. We haven't had such a bad time here, saving those random rifle shots from the biplane."

"Not at all. It's like watching a play, and you certainly have a clear field for observation, when you look up at the heavens. The stage is always in full view."

John was feeling uncommonly good. Their concealment while they watched the scouts and messengers from the skies coming to see the meaning of the flag had been easy and restful. Much of his long and painful tension had relaxed. The hum of distant artillery was in his ears as ever, like a moaning of the wind, but he was growing so used to it that he would now have noticed its absence rather than its presence. So he ate his share of bread and sausage with a good appetite, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye upon the heavens which burned in the same brilliant blue.

It was now about noon. The rain the night before had given fresh tints to the green of grass and foliage. The whole earth, indifferent to the puny millions that struggled on its vast bosom, seemed refreshed and revitalized. A modest little bird in brown plumage perched on a bough near them, and, indifferent too, to war, poured forth a brilliant volume of song.

"Happy little fellow," John said. "Nothing to do but eat and sleep and sing."

"Unless he's snapped up by some bigger bird," said Weber, "but having been an hour without callers we're now about to have a new one. And as this comes from the west it's likely to be French."

John felt excitement, and stood up. Yes, there was the machine coming out of the blue haze in the west, soaring beautifully and fast. It was very high, but his eye, trained now, saw that it was descending gradually. He felt an intense hope that it was Lannes, but he soon knew that it was not lie. The approaching machine could not possibly be the Arrow.

"It's a Bleriot monoplane," said Weber. "I can tell the type almost as far as I can see it. It's much like a gigantic bird, with powerful parchment wings mounted upon a strong body. The wings as you see now present a concave surface to the earth. They always do that. The flyer sits between the two wings and has in front of him the lever with which he controls the whole affair."

"You seem to know a good deal about flying machines, Weber."

"Oh, yes, I've observed them a lot. I've always been curious about them and I've attended the great flying meets at Rheims, but personally I'm a coward about heights. I study the types of these wonderful machines, but I don't go up in 'em. That's a little fellow coming now and he's seen the flag."

"There's only one man in the plane, but as he's undoubtedly French what do you think we ought to do? He can't carry us away with him in the machine, it's too small. Do you think we should signal him to come to the ground and have a talk?"

"Perhaps we'd better let him pass, Mr. Scott. We have no real information to give. He might suspect that we are Germans and a lot of time would be lost maneuvering. Suppose we remain in hiding, and say nothing until Lannes himself appears."

"You still feel sure that he will come?"

"It's a conviction."

"Same way with me, and I agree with you that we'd better let our friend in the Bleriot go by. He's descending fast now. The plane certainly does look like a bird. Reminds me somewhat of a German Taube, though this machine is much smaller."

"The pilot will take only a look or two at the flag. Then, if we don't hail him, he'll sail swiftly back to the west."

"For good reasons too. The air here is chiefly in the German sphere of influence, and if I were in his place I'd take to my heels too at a single glance."

"That's what he's doing now. He's flying past the flag just as one of the Germans did. He leans over to take a look at it, can't make out what it means, glances back apprehensively toward the German quarter of the heavens, and now he's sliding like a streak through the blue for French air."

"So near and yet so far! A friend in the air just over our heads, and we had to let him go. Well, he couldn't have done us any good."

"No, he couldn't, and he's gone back so fast that he's out of sight already, but another and different inhabitant of the air is coming out of the south. See, the shape off there, Mr. Scott. Wait until it comes nearer, and I think I can tell you what it is. Now it's made out the flag and is steering for it."

"What class of plane is it, Weber? Can you tell that yet?"

"Yes. It's an Esnault-Pelterie, an invention of a young Frenchman. It's a monoplane with flexible, warped wings. It's made of steel tubes, welded together, and it has two wheels, one behind the other for contact with the ground."

"I noticed something queer in its appearance. It's the wheels. I don't call this machine any great beauty, but it seems to cut the air well. I suppose we'd better treat it as we did the Bleriot—let it go as it came, none the worse and none the wiser?"

"I think so. But we have no other choice! That flyer is a suspicious fellow and he isn't taking any chances. He's come fairly close to the flag, and now he's sheering off at an angle."

"I don't blame him. He probably has something more important to do than to unravel the meaning of a flag in a tree top."

"Nor I either. But whatever comes we'll wait for Lannes, always for Lannes. The heavens here, Mr. Scott, are peopled with strange birds, but of all the lot there is one particular bird for which we are looking."

"Right again. My eyes have grown a little weary of watching the skies. For a long stare, blue isn't as soft and easy a sight as green, and I think I'll look at the grass and leaves for a little while."

"Then while you rest I'll keep an outlook and when I'm tired you can relieve me."

"Good enough."

John lay down in the grass and rested his body while he eased his worn eyes. Weber commented now and then on the new birds in the heavens, aeroplanes of all kinds, but they kept their distance.

"The air over us is not held now by either French or Germans," said Weber, "and I imagine that only the more daring make incursions into it. Perhaps, too, they are kept busy elsewhere, because, as my ears distinctly tell me, the battle is increasing in volume."

"I noticed the swelling fire when I lay down here," said John. "It seems a strange thing, but for a while I had forgotten all about the battle."

Presently Weber took his eyes from the heavens, moved about and looked uneasy.

"If I'm not mistaken," he said, "I caught a glimpse of steel down the river. I think it was a lance head glittering in the sun, and Uhlans may be near."

"How far away do you think it was."

"A half-mile or more. I must take a look in that direction. I'm a good scout, Mr. Scott, and I'll see what's up. Watch here will you, until I come back? It may be some time."

"All right, but don't get yourself captured, Weber. I'd be mighty lonesome without you."

"Don't fear for me. Of course, as I told you, I'll be gone for some time, and if I may suggest, Mr. Scott, I wouldn't move from among the vines."

"Catch me doing it! I'll say here in my green bower and as my eyes are back in form I'll watch the heavens."

"Good-bye, then, for a while."

Weber slipped away. His tread was so light that he vanished, as if he had melted into air.

"That man would certainly have made a good scout in our old Indian days," thought John, and with the thought came the conviction that Weber was too clever to let himself be caught. Then he turned his attention back to the heavens.

They were now well on into the afternoon, and the sun was at the zenith. A haze of gold shimmered against the vast blue vault. A wind perfumed with grass and green leaves, brought also the ceaseless roar of the guns, and now and then the bitter taste of burned gunpowder. The faint trembling of the earth, or rather of the air just above it, went on, and John, turning about in his little bower, surveyed the heavens from all quarters.

He saw shapes, faint, dark and floating on every horizon, but none of them came near until a full half-hour had elapsed. Then one shot out of the west, sailed toward the northeast, but curving suddenly, came back in the direction of the tree. As the shape grew larger and more defined John's heart began to throb. He had seen many aeroplanes that day, and most of them had been swift and graceful, but none was as swift and graceful as the one that was now coming.

It was a machine, beautiful in shape, and as lithe and fast as the darting swallow. There could be none other like it in the heavens, and his heart throbbed harder. Intuition, perhaps, was back of knowledge and he never for a moment doubted that it was he for whom they had looked so long.

The aeroplane seemed fairly to shoot out of space. First its outlines became visible, and then the man at the rudder. He came straight toward the tree, dropped low and circled about it, while John rushed from the vines and cried as loud as he could:

"Lannes! Lannes, it's me! John Scott! I've been waiting for you!"

The Arrow dropped further, barely touched the earth, and Lannes, leaning over, shouted to John in tones, tense and sharp with command:

"Give the plane a shove with all your might, and jump in. For God's sake don't linger, man! Jump!"

The impulse communicated by Lannes was so powerful that before he knew what he was doing John pushed the Arrow violently and sprang into the extra seat, just as it was leaving the earth.

Lannes gave the rudder a strong twist and the aeroplane shot up like a mounting bird. John got back his breath and presence of mind.

"Wait, Philip! Wait!" he cried. "We're leaving behind our friend Weber! He's down there, somewhere by the river!"

Lannes made no reply. The Arrow continued its rise, sharp and swift, and John heard a crackling sound below. Little missiles, steel and deadly, shot by them. One passed so close to his face that his breath went again. When he recovered it once more the Arrow, its inmates, unharmed, was far above the range of rifles, flying in a circle.

"Look down, John," said Lannes.



CHAPTER X

OLD FRIENDS

John, obeying Lannes' command, glanced down, as one looks over the side of a ship toward the sea, and he saw many horsemen galloping across the field. He recognized at once the Uhlans, and, for all he knew; they might be von Boehlen's own command.

"Hand me your glasses, will you?" he said.

When Lannes passed them to him he looked long and well, but he did not see any sign of a prisoner among the Prussians. He also searched the woods and other fields near by, but they were empty. The whole Prussian force was gathered beneath them. John breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"It's evident that Weber has escaped," he said. "Doubtless this was the very troop of Uhlans of which the Alsatian had caught a glimpse. He is clever and swift and I've no doubt he found a covert."

"I'm sorry we had to leave him," said Lannes, "but there was no other choice. I came to the tree to examine the flag, and being above I saw the Uhlans nearby before you did. Then I heard your shout and dropped down. But as I knew the Uhlans were coming for us I made you jump almost before you knew it, and we got away by a hair. The Arrow was struck twice, but the bullets glanced off its polished sides. There are two slight scars, but I can have them removed."

John laughed.

"Philip," he said, "I believe you love the Arrow as a fellow loves his best girl."

"Well spoken, Monsieur Jean the Scott, and the Arrow never fails me. And so you've been with Weber?"

"It's a long tale. I was in a boat crossing the Marne. It was sunk by one of the French shells, and I escaped. I reached the deserted cottage of a peasant, and Weber, who was wandering around, happened to come there, too. We've been trying to escape today, and we put that flag up in the tree as a sort of signal, while we hid among the vines below, until you should come, as he believed you would. He was right, but he was unlucky enough to be absent when you arrived." "Maybe it couldn't have happened in a better way. The Arrow can carry only two, and I don't know what we'd have done with him. He's a clever fellow and he'll make his way back to the army."

"I hope so, in fact I feel so. But, Philip, it's glorious to be with you again, and to be up here, where the bullets can't reach you."

"That is, so long as the German flyers don't come near enough to take shots at us."

"I don't see any in sight, and meanwhile I intend to be comfortable. Good old Arrow! The best little rescuer in the world! Lannes, I believe it's a large part of your business to fly about over fields of battle and rescue me."

"You certainly give me plenty of opportunities," laughed Lannes.

"What's been happening? I fancy that a lot of water has flowed under the bridges of the Marne since I left you."

"We continue to gain," replied Lannes, with quiet satisfaction. "We press the German armies back everywhere. Our supreme chief is a silent man, but he has delivered a master stroke. We've emerged from the very gulf of defeat and despair to the heights of victory. We're not only driving the Germans across the Marne, but we're driving them further. Moreover, their armies are cut apart, and one is fighting for its existence, just as the French and English were fighting for theirs in that terrible retreat from Mons and Charleroi."

"It's glorious, but we mustn't be too sanguine, Lannes. The powers that overcome the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires will not forget for a hundred years that they had a war."

"You're not telling me any news, Monsieur Jean the Scott. I've been in Germany often, and like you I've seen what they have and what they are. We're only beginning."

"Where are you going now, Philip?"

"Toward the end of our line. I've some dispatches for the commander of the British force. Your friends, Carstairs and Wharton, are there, and you may see them. But I understand that the Strangers are to remain with the French, so you, Carstairs and Wharton will have to consider yourselves Frenchmen and stay under our banner."

"That's all right. I hope we'll be under the command of General Vaugirard. Do you know anything of him?"

"Not today, but he was alive yesterday. Take the glasses now, John, will you, and be my eyes as you have been before. One needs to watch the heavens all the time."

John took Lannes' powerful glasses, and objects invisible before leaped into view.

"I see two or three rivers, a dozen villages, and troops," he said. "The troops are to the west, and although they are this side of the Marne, I should judge that they are ours."

"Ours undoubtedly," said Lannes, glancing the way John's glasses pointed. "Not less than a hundred thousand of our men have crossed the Marne at that point, and more will soon be coming. It's a part of the great wedge thrust forward by our chief. But keep your eye on the air, John. What do you see there?"

"Nothing that's near. In the east I barely catch seven or eight black dots that I take to be German aeroplanes, but they seem to be content with hovering over their own lines. They don't approach."

"Doubtless they don't, because they're beginning to watch the air over the Marne as a danger zone. That pretty little signal of yours may have scared them."

Lannes laughed. It was evident that he was in a most excellent humor.

"All right, have your fun," said John, showing his own teeth in a smile. "If our flag didn't frighten away the German army it at least achieved what we wanted, that is, it brought you. The whole episode would be perfect if it were not for the fact that we lost sight of Weber."

"I tell you again not to worry about him. That man has shown uncommon ability to take care of himself."

"All right. I'll let him go for the present. Hello, here we are crossing the Marne again, and without getting our feet wet."

"We're a good half mile above it, but we'll cross it once more soon. I'm following the shortest road to the British army and that takes us over a loop of the river."

"Yes, here we are recrossing, and now we're coming to a region of chequered fields, green and brown and yellow. I always like these varied colors of the French country. It's a beautiful land down there, Philip."

"So it is, but see if it isn't defaced by sixty or seventy thousand sunburnt men in khaki, the khaki often stained with blood. The men, too, should be tired to death, but you can't tell that from this height."

"The British army you mean? Yes, by all that's glorious, I see them, or at least a part of them! I see thousands of men lying down in the fields as if they were dead."

"They're not dead, though. They just drop in their tracks and sleep in any position."

"I saw the Germans doing that, too. I suppose we'll land soon, Philip, won't we? They've sighted us and a plane is coming forward to meet us."

"We'll make for the meadow over there just beyond the little stream. I think I can discern the general's marquee, and I must deliver my message as soon as possible. Wave to that fellow that we're friends."

An English aeroplane was now very near them and John, leaning over, made gestures of amity. Although the aviator's head was almost completely enshrouded in a hood, he discerned a typically British face.

"Kings of the air, with dispatches for your general!" John cried. He knew that the man would not hear him, but he was so exultant that he wanted to say something, to shout to him, or in the slang of his own land, to let off steam.

But while the English aviator could not understand the words the gestures were clear to him, and he waved a hand in friendly fashion. Then, wheeling in a fine circle, he came back by their side as an escort.

The Arrow, like a bird, folding its wings, sank gracefully into the meadow, and Lannes, hastily jumping out, asked John to look after the aeroplane. Then he rushed toward a group of officers, among whom he recognized the chief of the army.

John himself disembarked stiffly, and stretched his limbs, while several young Englishmen looked at him curiously. He had learned long since how to deal with Englishmen, that is to take no notice of them until they made their presence known, and then to acquiesce slowly and reluctantly in their existence. So, he took short steps back and forth on the grass, flexing and tensing his muscles, as abstractedly as if he were alone on a desert island.

"I say," said a handsome fair young man at last, "would you mind telling us, old chap, where you come from?"

John continued to stretch his muscles and took several long and deep breaths. After the delay he turned to the fair young man and said:

"Beg pardon, but did you speak to me?"

The Englishman flushed a little and pulled at his yellow mustache. An older man said:

"Don't press His Highness, Lord James. Don't you see that he's an American and therefore privileged?"

"I'm privileged," said John, "because I was with you fellows from Belgium to Paris, and since then I've been away saving you from the Germans."

Lord James laughed. He had a fine face and all embarrassment disappeared from it.

"We want to be friends," he said. "Shake hands."

John shook. He also shook the hand of the older man and several others. Then he explained who he was, and told who had come with him, none less than the famous young French aviator, Philip Lannes.

"Lannes," said Mr. Yellow Mustache, who, John soon learned, was Lord James Ivor. "Why, we've all heard of him. He's come to the chief with messages a half-dozen times since this battle began, and I judge from the way he rushed to him just now that he has another, that can't be delayed."

"I think so, too," said John, "although I don't know anything about it myself. He's a close-mouthed fellow. But do any of you happen to have heard of an Englishman, Carstairs, and an American, Wharton, who belong to a company called the Strangers in the French army, but who must be at present with you—that is, if they're alive?"

John's voice dropped a little, as he added the last words, but Lord James Ivor walked to the brow of a low hill, called to somebody beyond, and then walked back.

"It's a happy chance that I can tell you what you want to know," he said. "Those two men have been serving in my own company, and they're both alive and well. But they were lying on the grass there, dead to the world, that is, sleeping, as if they were two of the original seven sleepers."

Two figures appeared on the brow of the hill, gazed at first in a puzzled manner at John and then, uttering shouts of welcome, rushed toward him. Carstairs seized him by one hand and Wharton by the other.

"Not killed, I see," said Carstairs.

"Nor is he going to be killed," said Wharton.

"Now, where have you been?" asked Carstairs.

"Yes, where have you been?" asked Wharton.

"I've been taking a couple of pleasure trips with my friend, Lannes," replied John. "Between trips I was a prisoner of the Germans, and I've seen a lot of the great battle. Has the British army suffered much?"

A shade flitted over the face of Carstairs as he replied:

"We haven't been shot up so much since Waterloo. It's been appalling. For days and nights we've been fighting and marching. Whenever we stopped even for a moment we fell on the ground and were asleep before we touched it. Half the fellows I knew have been killed. I think as long as I live I'll hear the drumming of those guns in my ears, and, confound 'em, I still hear 'em in reality now. If you turn your attention to it you can hear the confounded business quite plainly! But what I do know, Scott, is that we've been winning! I don't know where I am and I haven't a clear idea of what I've been doing all the time, but as sure as we're in France the victory is ours."

"But won by the French chiefly" John could not keep from saying.

"Quite true. Our own army is not large, but it has done as much per man."

"And the moral support," added John. "The French have felt the presence of a friend, a friend, too, who in six months will be ten times as strong as he is now."

"Where is Lannes?" asked Wharton.

"He's got your job, Wharton," replied John with a smile. "He's Envoy Extraordinary and Bearer of Messages concerning Life and Death between the armies. As soon as he landed he went directly to the British commander, and they're now conferring in a tent. That will never happen to you. You will never be closeted with the leader of a great army."

"I don't know. I may not be able to fly like the Frenchman, but he can't handle the wireless as I can, and he isn't the chain-lightning chauffeur that Carstairs is. Please to remember those facts."

"I do. But here comes Lannes, the man of mystery."

Lannes seemed preoccupied, but he greeted Carstairs and Wharton warmly.

"I'm about to take another flight," he said. "No, thank you so much, but I've time neither to eat nor to drink. I must fly at once, though it's to be a short flight. Take care of my friend, Monsieur Jean the Scott, while I'm gone, won't you? Don't let him wander into German hands again, because I won't have time to go for him once more."

"We won't!" said Carstairs and Wharton with one voice. "Having got him back we're going to keep him."

Lannes smiling sprang into the Arrow. The willing young Englishmen gave it a mighty push, and rising into the blue afternoon sky he sailed away toward the south.

"He'll be back all right," said Carstairs. "I've come to the conclusion that nothing can ever catch that fellow. He's a wonder, he is. One of the most difficult jobs I have, Scott, is to give the French all the credit that's due 'em. I've been trained, as all other Englishmen were, to consider 'em pretty poor stuff that we've licked regularly for a thousand years, and here we suddenly find 'em heroes and brothers-in-arms. It's all the fault of the writers. Was it Shakespeare who said: 'Methinks that five Frenchmen on one pair of English legs did walk?'"

"No," said Lord James Ivor, "It was the other way around. 'Methinks that one Englishman on five pairs of French legs did walk.'"

"I'm not so sure about the number, either," interjected Wharton. "Are you positive it was five?"

"Whatever it was," said Carstairs, "the Frenchman was slandered, and by our own great bard, too. But come and take something with us, if Lord James, our immediate chief, is willing."

"He's willing, and he'll go with you," said Lord James Ivor. "I need a bite myself and in war like this a man can't afford to neglect food and drink, when the chance is offered."

"The habits of you Europeans are strong," said John, whose spirits were still exuberant. "If you didn't have to stop now and then to work or to fight you'd eat all the time. One meal would merge into another, making a beautiful, savory chain linked together. I know the Englishman's heaven perfectly well. It's made of lakes of ale, beer, porter and Scotch highballs, surrounded by high banks of cheese, mutton and roast beef."

"There could be worse heavens," said Carstairs, "and if it should happen that way it wouldn't be long before you Yankees would be trying to break out of your heaven and into ours. But here's a taste of it now, the cheese, for instance, and the beer, although it's in bottles."

A spry Tommy Atkins served them, and John, thankful at heart, ate and drank with the best of them. And while they ate the pulsing waves of air from the battle beat upon their ears. It seemed to these young men to have been beating that way for weeks.

"Lannes will be back soon," said John to Carstairs and Wharton, "and he'll tear you away from your friends here. You think, Carstairs, that you're an Englishman, and you're convinced, Wharton, that you're an American, but you're both wrong. You're Frenchmen, and you're going back to the French army, where you belong. Then Captain Daniel Colton of the Strangers will want to know from you why you haven't returned sooner."

"But how are we to go?" said Carstairs.

"And where are we to go?" said Wharton.

"I'd go in a minute," added Carstairs, "if the German army would let me."

"So would I," said Wharton, "but the Germans fight so hard that we can't get away."

"Lannes will attend to all those matters," said John. "I'll rest until he comes, if I have the chance. Is that your artillery firing?"

"It's our big guns out in front," said Lord James Ivor. "Jove, but what work they've done! A lot of our guns have been smashed, one half of our gunners maybe have been smashed with 'em, but they've never flinched. They covered our retreat from Belgium, and they've been the heralds of our advance here on the Marne! Listen to 'em! How they talk!"

The heavy crash of guns far in front and the thunder of the German guns replying came back to their ears. It was a louder note in the general and ceaseless murmur of the battle, but the young men paid it only a passing moment of attention. Carstairs presently added as an afterthought:

"Unless Lannes returns soon I don't think we'll hear from him. That blaze of the guns in front of us indicates close fighting again, and we'll probably be ordered forward soon."

"I don't think so," said Lord James Ivor. "Our guns and the German guns will talk together for quite a while before the infantry advance. You can spend a good two hours with us yet, and still have time to depart for the French army."

It was evident that Lord James Ivor knew what he was talking about, since, as far as John could see, the khaki army lay outspread on the turf. These men were too much exhausted and too much dulled to danger to stir merely because the cannon were blazing. It took the sharp orders of their officers to move them. Shells from the German guns began to fall along the fringe of the troops, but thousands slept heavily on.

John, after disposing of the excellent rations offered to him, sat down on the grass with Wharton, Carstairs and Lord James Ivor. The sun was now waning, but the western sky was full of gold, and the yellow rays slanting across the hills and fields made them vivid with light. Lord James handed his glasses to John with the remark:

"Would you like to take a look there toward the east, Scott?"

John with the help of the glasses discerned the English batteries in action. He saw the men working about them, the muzzles pointing upward, and then the flash. Some of the guns were completely hidden in foliage, and he could detect their presence only by the heavy detonations coming from such points. Yet, like many of the English soldiers about him, John's mind did not respond to so much battle. He looked at the flashes, and he listened to the reports without emotion. His senses had become dulled by it, and registered no impressions.

"We've masked our batteries as much as possible," said Lord James. "The Germans are great fellows at hiding their big guns. They use every clump of wood, hay stacks, stray stacks and anything else, behind which you could put a piece of artillery. They trained harder before the war, but we'll soon be able to match 'em."

While Lord James was talking, John turned the glasses to the south and watched the sky. He had observed two black dots, both of which grew fast into the shape of aeroplanes. One, he knew, was the Arrow. He had learned to recognize the plane at a vast distance. It was something in the shape or a trick of motion perhaps, almost like that of a human being, with which he had become familiar and which he could not mistake. The other plane, by the side of Lannes' machine, bothered him. It was much larger than the Arrow, but they seemed to be on terms of perfect friendship, each the consort of the other.

"Lannes is coming," announced John. "He's four or five miles to the south and he's about a quarter of a mile up, but he has company. Will you have a look, Lord James?"

Lord James Ivor, taking back his own glasses, studied the two approaching planes.

"The small one looks like your friend's plane," he said, "and the other, although much bigger, has only one man in it too. But they fly along like twins. We'll soon know all about them because they're coming straight to us. They're descending now into this field."

The Arrow slanted gently to the earth and the larger machine descended near by. Lannes stepped out of one, and an older man, whom John recognized as the aviator Caumartin, alighted from the other.

"My friends," said Lannes, cheerily, "here we are again. You see I've brought with me a friend, Monsieur Caumartin, a brave man, and a great aviator."

He paused to introduce Caumartin to Wharton and the Englishmen, and then went on:

"This flying machine in which our friend Caumartin comes is not so swift and so graceful as the Arrow—few aeroplanes are—but it is strong and it has the capacity. It is what you might call an excursion steamer of the air. It can take several people and our good Caumartin has come in it for Lieutenant Wharton and Lieutenant Carstairs. So! he has an order for them written by the brave Captain Colton of the Strangers. Produce the order, Monsieur Caumartin."

The aviator took a note from a pocket in his jacket and handed it to Lord James Ivor, who announced that it was in truth such an order.

"You're to be delivered to the Strangers F.O.B.," said John.

"What's F.O.B.?" exclaimed Carstairs.

"It's a shipping term of my country," replied John. "It means Free on Board, and you'll arrive among the Strangers without charge."

"But," said Carstairs, looking dubiously at the big, ugly machine, "automobiles are my specialty!"

"And the wireless is mine!" said Wharton in the same doubting tone.

"Oh, it's easy," said John lightly. "Easiest thing in the world. You have nothing to do but sit still and look calm and wise. If you're attacked by a Zeppelin, throw bombs—no doubt Caumartin has them on board—but if a flock of Taubes assail you use your automatics. I congratulate you both on making your first flight under such auspices, with two armies of a million men each, more or less, looking at you, and with the chance to dodge the shells from four or five thousand cannon."

"Your trouble, Scott, is talking too much," said Wharton, "because you went up in the air when you had no other way to go, you think you're a bird."

"So I am at times," laughed John. "A bird without the feathers. Come now, brace up! Remember that the solid earth is always below you, a long way below, perhaps, but it's there, and Friend Caumartin is bound to deliver you soon to your rightful master, Captain Daniel Colton, who will talk to you like an affectionate but stern parent."

"For Heaven's sake, let's start and get away from this wild Yankee," said Carstairs.

"But you won't get away from me," rejoined John. "Lannes and I in the Arrow will watch over you all the way, and, if we can, rescue you, should your plane break down."

Caumartin supplied Wharton and Carstairs with suitable coats and caps, and they took their places unflinchingly in the big plane. Their hearts may have been beating hard, but they would not let their hands tremble.

"I suppose the Omnibus starts first, Philip, doesn't it?" asked John.

"Yes," replied Lannes, smiling, "and we can overtake it. Omnibus is a good name for it. We'll call it that. It looks awkward, John, but it's one of the safest machines built."

Plenty of willing hands gave the Omnibus a lift and then did a like service for the Arrow. As they rose, aviators and passengers alike waved a farewell to Lord James Ivor, and he and the Englishmen about him waved back. But the thousands lying on the grass slept heavily on, while the cannon on their utmost fringe thundered and crashed and the German cannon crashed and thundered, replying.

The Arrow kept close to the Omnibus, so close that John could see the white faces of Wharton and Carstairs and their hands clenching the sides. But he remembered his own original experience, and he was not disposed to jest at them now.

"They're air-sick—as I was," he said to Lannes. "Call to them to look westward at the troops," said Lannes. "Great portions of the French and English armies are now visible, and such a sight will make them forget their natural apprehensions."

Lannes was right. When they beheld the magnificent panorama spread out for them the color came back into the faces of Carstairs and Wharton, and their clenched fingers relaxed. The spectacle was indeed grand and gorgeous as they looked up at the sky, down at the earth, and at the line where they met. The sun was now low, but mighty terraces of red and gold rose in the west, making it a blaze of varied colors. In the east the terraces were silver and silver gray, and the light there was softer. The green earth beneath was mottled with the red and silver and gold from the skies.

The German army was yet invisible beyond the hills, although the cannon were flashing there, but to the west they saw vast masses of infantry, some stationary, while others moved slowly forward. Looking upon this wonderful sight, Wharton and Carstairs forgot that they were high in the air. Their hearts beat fast, and their eyes became brilliant with enthusiasm. They waved hands at the Arrow which flew near like a guiding friend.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" shouted John.

"I never expect to see its like again," Carstairs shouted back, and then, lest he should not be true to his faith, he added:

"But I won't desert the automobile. It's my best friend."

"British obstinacy!" shouted John.

Carstairs shouted back something, but the planes were now too far apart for him to hear. John saw that the Omnibus, despite her awkward look, was flying well and he also saw through Lannes' glasses four aeroplanes bearing up from the east. He did not say much until he had examined them well and had concluded that they were Taubes.

"Lannes," he said, "German machines are trespassing on our air, and unless I'm mistaken they're making for us."

"It's likely. Just under the locker there you'll find a rifle, and a belt of cartridges. It's a good weapon, and if the pinch comes you'll have to use it. Are your friends good shots?"

"I think they are, and I know they're as brave as lions."

"Then they'll have a chance to show it. The Omnibus carries several rifles and an abundance of ammunition. She might be called a cargo boat, as there's a lot of room on her. I'm going to bear in close, and you tell Caumartin and the others of the danger."

The Arrow swerved, came near to the Omnibus, and John shouted the warning. Carstairs and Wharton instantly seized rifles and he saw them lay two others loaded at their feet. With the prospect of a battle for life air-sickness disappeared.

"You can rely on them, Philip," said John as the Arrow bore away a little, "but I don't like the looks of one of those German machines."

"What's odd about it?"

"It's bigger than the others. Ah, now I see! It carries a machine gun."

"That's bad. It can send a hail of metal at us. It's lucky that aeroplanes are such unstable gun-platforms. When platforms and targets are alike swerving it's hard to hit anything. We're going to rise and dive, and rise and dive and swerve and swerve, John, so be ready. I'll signal to Caumartin to do the same, and maybe the machine gun won't get us."

John was quite sure that the Arrow could escape by immediate flight, but he knew that Lannes would never desert the Omnibus, and its passengers, and he felt the same way. The subject was not even mentioned by either.

The German machines, approaching rapidly, spread out like a fan, the heavier one with the machine gun in the center. John could see the man at the rapid firer, but he did not yet open with it. The Arrow and the Omnibus were wavering like feathers in a storm and closer range was needed. John sat with his own rifle across his knee and then looked at Wharton in the Omnibus scarcely a hundred yards away. The figure of Wharton was tense and rigid. His rifle was raised and his eyes never left the man at the machine gun.

"I forgot to tell you, Philip," said John, "that Wharton is a great sharpshooter. It's natural to him, and I don't believe the shifting platform will interfere with his aim."

"Then I hope that he never has done better sharp-shooting than he will do today. Ah, there goes the machine gun!"

There was a rapid rat-a-tat, not so clear and distinct as it would have been at the same distance on ground, and a stream of bullets poured from the machine gun. But they passed between the Arrow and the Omnibus, and only cut the unoffending air. Meanwhile Wharton was watching. A wrath, cold but consuming, had taken hold of him. The fact that he was high above the earth, perched in a swaying unstable seat was forgotten. He had eyes and thought only for the murderous machine gun and the man who worked it. An instinctive marksman, he and his rifle were now as one, and of all the birds of prey in the air at that moment Wharton was the most dangerous.

The machine gun was silent for a minute. The riflemen in the Taubes on the wings of the attacking force fired a few shots, but all of them went wild. John, tense and silent, sat with his own rifle raised, but half of the time he watched Wharton.

The two forces came a little nearer. Again the machine gun poured forth its stream of bullets. Two glanced off the sides of the Omnibus, and then John saw Wharton's rifle leap to his shoulder. The movement and the flash of the weapon were so near together that be seemed to take no aim. Yet his bullet sped true. The man at the machine gun, who was standing in a stooped position, threw up his hands, fell backward and out of the plane. A thrill of horror shot through John, and he shut his eyes a moment to keep from seeing that falling body.

"What has happened?" asked Lannes, who had not looked around.

"Wharton has shot the man at the machine gun clean out of the aeroplane. He must be falling yet."

"Ghastly, but necessary. Has anybody taken the slain man's place?"

"Yes, another has sprung to the gun! But he's gone! Wharton has shot him too! He's fallen on the floor of the car, and he lies quite still."

"Your friend is indeed a sharpshooter. How many men are left in the plane?"

"Only one! No, good God, there's none! Wharton has shot the third man also, and now the machine goes whirling and falling through space!"

"I said that friend of yours must be a sharpshooter," said Lannes, in a tone of awe, "but he must be more! He must be the king of all riflemen. It's evident that the Omnibus knows how to defend herself. I'll swing in a little, and you can take a shot or two."

John fired once, without hitting anything but the air, which made no complaint, but the battle was over. Horrified by the fate that had overtaken their comrades and seeing help for their enemy at hand the Taubes withdrew.

The Arrow and the Omnibus flew on toward the French lines, whence other machines were coming to meet them.



CHAPTER XI

THE CONTINUING BATTLE

The Arrow bore in toward the Omnibus. Wharton had put his rifle aside and was staring downward as if he would see the wreck that he had made. Lannes called to him loudly:

"You've saved us all!"

Wharton looked rather white, but he shouted back:

"I had no other choice."

The French aeroplanes were around them now, their motors drumming steadily and the aviators shouting congratulations to Lannes and Caumartin, whom they knew well. It was a friendly group, full of pride and exultation, and the Arrow and the Omnibus had a triumphant escort. Soon they were directly over the French, and then they began their descent. As usual, when they reached the army they made it amid cheers, and the first man who greeted John was short and young but with a face of pride.

"You have come back to us out of the air, Monsieur Scott," he said, "and I salute you."

It was Pierre Louis Bougainville, made a colonel already for extraordinary, almost unprecedented, valor and ability in so young a man. John recognized his rank by his uniform, and he acknowledged it gladly.

"It's true, I have come back, Colonel Bougainville," he said, "and right glad I am to come. I see that your country has had no cause to complain of you in the last week."

"Nor of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen," said Bougainville. "Your company, the Strangers, is close at hand, and here is your captain now."

Captain Daniel Colton, thin and ascetic, walked forward. John gave him his best salute and said:

"Captain Colton, I beg to report to you for duty."

A light smile passed swiftly over Cotton's face.

"You're a little late, Lieutenant Scott," he said.

"I know it, sir, but I've brought Lieutenant Carstairs and Lieutenant Wharton with me. There have been obstacles which prevented our speedy return. We've done our best."

"I can well believe it. You left on horseback, and you return by air. But I'm most heartily glad to see all three of you again. I feared that you were dead."

"Thank you, sir," said John. "But we don't mean to die."

"Nevertheless," said Captain Colton, gravely, "death has been all about us for days and nights. Many of the Strangers are gone. You will find the living lying in the little valley just beyond us, and you can resume your duties."

Lannes, after a word or two, left them, and Caumartin took the Omnibus to another part of the field. Lannes' importance was continually growing in John's eyes, nor was it the effect of imagination. He saw that under the new conditions of warfare the ability of the young Frenchman to carry messages between generals separated widely could not be overrated. He might depart that very night on another flight.

"May I ask, sir," he said to Captain Colton, "to what command or division the Strangers are now attached?"

"To that of General Vaugirard, a very able man."

"I'm glad to hear it, sir. I know him. I was with him before I was taken by the Germans."

"It seems that you're about to have a general reunion," said Carstairs to young Scott, as they walked away.

"I am, and I'm mighty happy over it. I'll admit that I was rather glad to see you, you blooming Britisher."

About one-third of the Strangers were gone forever, and the rest, except the higher officers, were prostrate in the glade. White, worn and motionless they lay in the same stupor that John had seen overtake the German troops. Some were flat upon their backs, with arms outstretched, looking like crosses, others lay on their faces, and others were curled up on their sides. Few were over twenty-five. Nearly all had mothers in America or Great Britain.

While they slept the guns yet grumbled at many points. The sound on the horizon had gone on so long now that it seemed normal to John. He knew that it would continue so throughout the night, and maybe for many more days and nights. Unless it came near and made him a direct personal menace he would pay no attention to it.

It was growing late. Night was spreading once more over the vast battle field, stretching over thirty leagues maybe. The common soldier knew nothing, majors and colonels knew little more, but the silent man whose invisible hand had swept the gigantic German army back from Paris knew much. While the fire of the artillery continued under the searchlights the exhausted infantry sank down. Then the telephones began to talk over a vast stretch of space, dazzling white lights made signals, the sputtering wireless sent messages in the air, and the flying machines shot through the heavens. Commanders talked to one another in many ways now, and they would talk all through the night.

John and his comrades ate supper, while most of the Strangers slept around them. Those who were awake recognized them, shook hands and said a few words. They were a taciturn lot. After supper Carstairs and Wharton dropped upon the grass and were soon sound asleep. Scott was inclined to be wakeful and he walked along the edge of the glade, looking anxiously at the sleeping forms.

He saw the loom of a fire just beyond the ridge and going to the crest to look at it he beheld outlined before it a gigantic figure that he recognized at once. It was General Vaugirard, and John would have been glad to speak to him, but he hesitated to approach a general. While he stood doubting a hand fell upon his shoulder and a glad voice said in his ear:

"And our young American has come back! Ah, my friend, let me shake your hand!"

It was Captain de Rougemont, trim, erect and without a wound. John gladly let him shake. Then in reply to de Rougemont's eager questions he told briefly of all that had happened since they parted.

"The general has asked twice if we had any news of you," said de Rougemont. "He does not forget. A great mind in a vast body."

"Could I speak to him?"

"Of a certainty, my friend; come."

They advanced toward the fire. General Vaugirard was walking up and down, his hands clasped behind his back, and whistling softly. His huge figure looked yet more huge outlined against the flames. He heard the tread of the two young men and looking up recognized John instantly.

"Risen from the dead!" he exclaimed with warmth, clasping the young man's hand in his own gigantic palm. "I had despaired of ever seeing you again! There are so many more gallant lads whom I will certainly never see! Ah, well, such is life! The roll of our brave young dead is long, very long!"

He reclasped his hands behind his back and walking up and down began to whistle again softly. His emotion over the holocaust had passed, and once more he was the general planning for victory. But he stopped presently and said to John:

"The Strangers, to whom you belong, have come under my command. You are one of my children now. I have my eye on all of you. You are brave lads. Go and seek rest with them while you can. You may not have another chance in a month. We have driven the German, but he will turn, and then we may fight weeks, months, no one knows how long. Ah, well, such is life!"

John saluted respectfully, and withdrew to the little open glade in which the Strangers were lying, sleeping a great sleep. Captain Colton himself, wrapped in a blanket, was now a-slumber under a tree, and Wharton and Carstairs near by, stretched on their sides, were deep in slumber too. Fires were burning on the long line, but they were not numerous, and in the distance they seemed mere pin points. At times bars of intense white light, like flashes of lightning, would sweep along the front, showing that the searchlights of either army still provided illumination for the fighting. The note of the artillery came like a distant and smothered groan, but it did not cease, and it would not cease, since the searchlights would show it a way all through the night.

John sat down, looked at the faint flashes on the far horizon and listened to that moaning which grew in volume as one paid close attention to it. Europe or a great part of it had gone mad. He was filled once more with wrath against kings and all their doings as he looked upon the murderous aftermath of feudalism, the most gigantic of all wars, made in a few hours by a few men sitting around a table. Then he laughed at himself. What was he! A mere feather in a cyclone! Certainly he had been blown about like one!

His nervous imagination now passed quickly and throwing himself upon the ground he slept like those around him. All the Strangers were awakened at early dawn by the signal of a trumpet, and when John opened his eyes he found the air still quivering beneath the throb of the guns. As he had foreseen they had never ceased in the darkness, and he could not remember how many days and nights now they had been raining steel upon human beings.

He was refreshed and strengthened by a night of good sleep, but his mind was as sensitive as ever. In the morning no less bitterly than at night he raged against the folly and ambition of the kings. But the others paid no attention to the cannon. They were light of heart and easy of tongue. They chaffed one another in the cool dawn, and cried to the cooks for breakfast, which was soon brought to them, hot and plentiful.

"I suppose it's forward again," said Carstairs between drinks of coffee.

"I fancy you're right," said Wharton. "Since we've been put in the brigade of that giant of a general, Vaugirard, we're always going forward. He seems to have an uncommon love of fighting for a fat man."

"It's an illusion," said John, "that a fat man is more peaceful than a thin one."

"How are you going to prove it?" asked Wharton.

"Look at Napoleon. When he was thin he was a great fighter, and when he became stout he was just as great a fighter as ever. Fat didn't take away his belligerency."

"I hear that the whole German army has been driven across the Marne," said Carstairs, "and that the force we hoped to cut off has either escaped or is about to escape. If that's so they won't retreat much further. The pride of the Germans is too great, and their army is too powerful for them to yield much more ground to us."

"I think you're right, or about as near right as an Englishman can be, Carstairs," said John. "What must be the feelings of the Emperor and the kings and the princes and the grand dukes and the dukes and the martial professors to know that the German army has been turned back from Paris, just when the City of Light seemed ready to fall into their hands?"

"Pretty bitter, I think," said Carstairs, "but it's not pleasant to have the capital of a country fall into the hands of hostile armies. I don't read of such things with delight. It wouldn't give me any such overwhelming joy for us to march into Berlin. To beat the Germans is enough."

Another trumpet blew and the Strangers rose for battle again with an invisible enemy. All the officers, like the men, were on foot, their horses having been killed in the earlier fighting, and they advanced slowly across the stubble of a wheat field. The morning was still cool, although the sun was bright, and the air was full of vigor. The rumbling of the artillery grew with the day, but the Strangers said little. Battle had ceased to be a novelty. They would fight somewhere and with somebody, but they would wait patiently and without curiosity until the time came.

"I suppose Lannes didn't come back," said Carstairs. "I haven't heard anyone speak of seeing him this morning."

"He may have returned before we awoke," said John. "The Arrow flies very fast. Like as not he delivered his message, whatever it was, and was off again with another in a few minutes. He may be sixty or eighty miles from here now."

"Odd fellow that Lannes," said Carstairs. "Do you know anything about his people, Scott?"

"Not much except that he has a mother and sister. I spent a night with them at their house in Paris. I've heard that French family ties are strong, but they seemed to look upon him as the weak would regard a great champion, a knight, in their own phrase, without fear and without reproach."

"That speaks well for him."

John's mind traveled back to that modest house across the Seine. It had done so often during all the days and nights of fighting, and he thought of Julie Lannes in her simple white dress, Julie with the golden hair and the bluest of blue eyes. She had not seemed at all foreign to him. In her simplicity and openness she was like one of the young girls of his own country. French custom might have compelled a difference at other times, but war was a great leveler of manners. She and her mother must have suffered agonies of suspense, when the guns were thundering almost within hearing of Paris, suspense for Philip, suspense for their country, and suspense in a less degree for themselves. Maybe Lannes had gone back once in the Arrow to show them that he was safe, and to tell them that, for the time at least, the great German invasion had been rolled back.

"A penny for your dream!" said Carstairs.

"Not for a penny, nor for a pound, nor for anything else," said John. "This dream of mine had something brilliant and beautiful and pure at the very core of it, and I'm not selling."

Carstairs looked curiously at him, and a light smile played across his face. But the smile was sympathetic.

"I'll wager you that with two guesses I can tell the nature of your dream," he said.

John shook his head, and he, too, smiled.

"As we say at home," he said, "you may guess right the very first time, but I won't tell you whether you're right or wrong."

"I take only one guess. That coruscating core of your dream was a girl."

"I told you I wouldn't say whether you were right or wrong."

"Is she blonde or dark?"

"I repeat that I'm answering no questions."

"Does she live in one of your Northern or one of your Southern States?"

John smiled.

"I suppose you haven't heard from her in a long time, as mail from across the water isn't coming with much regularity to this battle field."

John smiled again.

"And now I'll conclude," said Carstairs, speaking very seriously. "If it is a girl, and I know it is, I hope that she'll smile when she thinks of you, as you've been smiling when you think of her. I hope, too, that you'll go through this war without getting killed, although the chances are three or four to one against it, and go back home and win her."

John smiled once more and was silent, but when Carstairs held out his hand he could not keep from shaking it. Then Paris, the modest house beyond the Seine, and the girl within it, floated away like an illusion, driven from thought in an instant by a giant shell that struck within a few hundred yards of them, exploding with a terrible crash and filling the air with deadly bits of flying shell.

There was such a whistling in his ears that John thought at first he had been hit, but when he shook himself a little he found he was unhurt, and his heart resumed its normal beat. Other shells coming out of space began to strike, but none so near, and the Strangers went calmly on. On their right was a Paris regiment made up mostly of short, but thick-chested men, all very dark. Its numbers were only one-third what they had been a week before, and its colonel was Pierre Louis Bougainville, late Apache, late of the Butte Montmartre. All the colonels, majors and captains of this regiment had been killed and he now led it, earning his promotion by the divine right of genius. He, at least, could look into his knapsack and see there the shadow of a marshal's baton, a shadow that might grow more material.

John watched him and he wondered at this transformation of a rat of Montmartre into a man. And yet there had been many such transformations in the French Revolution. What had happened once could always happen again. Napoleon himself had been the son of a poor little lawyer in a distant and half-savage island, not even French in blood, but an Italian and an alien.

Crash! Another shell burst near, and told him to quit thinking of old times and attend to the business before him. The past had nothing more mighty than the present. The speed of the Strangers was increased a little, and the French regiments on either side kept pace with them. More shells fell. They came, shrieking through the air like hideous birds of remote ages. Some passed entirely over the advancing troops, but one fell among the French on John's right, and the column opening out, passed shudderingly around the spot where death had struck.

Two or three of the Strangers were blown away presently. It seemed to John's horrified eyes that one of them entirely vanished in minute fragments. He knew now what annihilation meant.

The heavy French field guns behind them were firing over their heads, but there was still nothing in front, merely the low green hills and not even a flash of flame nor a puff of smoke. The whistling death came out of space.

The French went on, a wide shallow valley opened out before them, and they descended by the easy slope into it. Here the German shells and shrapnel ceased to fall among them, but, as the heavy thunder continued, John knew the guns had merely turned aside their fire for other points on the French line. Carstairs by his side gave an immense sigh of relief.

"I can never get used to the horrible roaring and groaning of those shells," he said. "If I get killed I'd like it to be done without the thing that does it shrieking and gloating over me."

They were well in the valley now, and John noticed that along its right ran a dense wood, fresh and green despite the lateness of the season. But as he looked he heard the shrill snarling of many trumpets, and, for a moment or two, his heart stood still, as a vast body of German cavalry burst from the screen of the wood and rushed down upon them.

It was not often in this war that cavalry had a great chance, but here it had come. The ambush was complete. The German signals, either from the sky or the hills, had told when the French were in the valley, and then the German guns had turned aside their fire for the very good reason that they did not wish to send shells among their own men.

John's feeling was one of horrified surprise. The German cavalry extending across a mile of front seemed countless. Imagination in that terrific moment magnified them into millions. He saw the foaming mouths, the white teeth and the flashing eyes of the horses, and then the tense faces and eyes of their riders. Lances and sabers were held aloft, and the earth thundered with the tread of the mounted legions.

"Good God!" cried Wharton.

"Wheel, men, wheel!" shouted Captain Colton.

As they turned to face the rushing tide of steel, the regiment of Bougainville whirled on their flank and then Bougainville was almost at his side. He saw fire leap from the little man's eye. He saw him shout commands, rapid incisive, and correct and he saw clearly that if this were Napoleon's day that marshal's baton in the knapsack would indeed become a reality.

The Paris regiment, kneeling, was the first to fire, and the next instant flame burst from the rifles of the Strangers. It was not a moment too soon. It seemed to many of the young Americans and Englishmen that they had been ridden down already, but sheet after sheet of bullets fired by men, fighting for their lives, formed a wall of death.

The Uhlans, the hussars and the cuirassiers reeled back in the very moment of triumph. Horses with their riders crashed to the ground, and others, mad with terror, rushed wildly through the French ranks.

John, Carstairs and Wharton snatched up rifles, all three, and began to fire with the men as fast as they could. A vast turmoil, frightful in its fury, followed. The German cavalry reeled back, but it did not retreat. The shrill clamor of many trumpets came again, and once more the horsemen charged. The sheet of death blazed in their faces again, and then the French met them with bayonet.

The Strangers had closed in to meet the shock. John felt rather than saw Carstairs and Wharton on either side of him, and the three of them were firing cartridge after cartridge into the light whitish smoke that hung between them and the charging horsemen. He was devoutly thankful that the Paris regiment was immediately on their right, and that it was led by such a man as Bougainville. General Vaugirard, he knew, was farther to their left, and now he began to hear the rapid firers, pouring a rain of death upon the cavalry.

"We win! we win!" cried Carstairs. "If they couldn't beat us down in the first rush they can't beat us down at all!"

Carstairs was right. The French had broken into no panic, and, when, infantry standing firm, pour forth the incessant and deadly stream of death, that modern arms make possible, no cavalry can live before them. Yet the Germans charged again and again into the hurricane of fire and steel. The tumult of the battle face to face became terrific.

John could no longer hear the words of his comrades. He saw dimly through the whitish smoke in front, but he continued to fire. Once he leaped aside to let a wounded and riderless horse gallop past, and thrice he sprang over the bodies of the dead.

The infantry were advancing now, driving the cavalry before them, and the French were able to bring their lighter field guns into action. John heard the rapid crashes, and he saw the line of cavalry drawing back. He, too, was shouting with triumph, although nobody heard him. But all the Strangers were filled with fiery zeal. Without orders they rushed forward, driving the horsemen yet further. John saw through the whitish mist a fierce face and a powerful arm swinging aloft a saber.

He recognized von Boehlen and von Boehlen recognized him. Shouting, the Prussian urged his horse at him and struck him with the saber. John, under impulse, dropped to his knees, and the heavy blade whistled above him. But something else struck him on the head and he fell senseless to the earth.



CHAPTER XII

JULIE LANNES

John Scott came slowly out of the darkness and hovered for a while between dusk and light. It was not an unpleasant world in which he lingered. It seemed full of rest and peace. His mind and body were relaxed, and there was no urgent call for him to march and to fight. The insistent drumming of the great guns which could play upon the nervous system until it was wholly out of tune was gone. The only sound he heard was that of a voice, a fresh young voice, singing a French song in a tone low and soft. He had always liked these little love songs of the kind that were sung in a subdued way. They were pathetic and pure as a rose leaf.

He might have opened his eyes and looked for the singer, but he did not. The twilight region between sleep and consciousness was too pleasant. He had no responsibilities, nothing to do. He had a dim memory that he had belonged to an army, that it was his business to try to kill some one, and to try to keep from getting killed, but all that was gone now. He could lie there, without pain of body or anxiety of mind, and let vague but bright visions pass through his soul.

His eyes still closed, he listened to the voice. It was very low, scarcely more than a murmur, yet it was thrillingly sweet. It might not be a human voice, after all, just the distant note of a bird in the forest, or the murmur of a brave little stream, or a summer wind among green leaves.

He moved a little and became conscious that he was not going back into that winter region of dusk. His soul instead was steadily moving toward the light. The beat of his heart grew normal, and then memory in a full tide rushed upon him. He saw the great cavalry battle with all its red turmoil, the savage swing of von Boehlen's saber and himself drifting out into the darkness.

He opened his eyes, the battle vanished, and he saw himself lying upon a low, wooden platform. His head rested upon a small pillow, a blanket was under him, and another above him. Turning slowly he saw other men wrapped in blankets like himself on the platform in a row that stretched far to right and left. Above was a low roof, but both sides of the structure were open.

He understood it all in a moment. He had come back to a world of battle and wounds, and he was one of the wounded. But he listened for the soft, musical note which he believed now, in his imaginative state, had drawn him from the mid-region between life and death.

The stalwart figure of a woman in a somber dress with a red cross sewed upon it passed between him and the light, but he knew that it was not she who had been singing. He closed his eyes in disappointment, but reopened them. A man wearing a white jacket and radiating an atmosphere of drugs now walked before him. He must be a surgeon. At home, surgeons wore white jackets. Beyond doubt he was one and maybe he was going to stop at John's cot to treat some terrible wound of which he was not yet conscious. He shivered a little, but the man passed on, and his heart beat its relief.

Then a soldier took his place in the bar of light. He was a short, thick man in a ridiculous, long blue coat, and equally ridiculous, baggy, red trousers. An obscure cap was cocked in an obscure manner over his ears, and his face was covered with a beard, black, thick and untrimmed. He carried a rifle over his shoulder and nobody could mistake him for anything but a Frenchman. Then he was not a prisoner again, but was in French hands. That, at least, was a consolation.

It was amusing to lie there and see the people, one by one, pass between him and the light. He could easily imagine that he was an inspection officer and that they walked by under orders from him. Two more women in those somber dresses with the red crosses embroidered upon them, were silhouetted for a moment against the glow and then were gone. Then a man with his arm in a sling and his face very pale walked slowly by. A wounded soldier! There must be many, very many of them!

The musical murmur ceased and he was growing weary. He closed his eyes and then he opened them again because he felt for a moment on his face a fragrant breath, fleeting and very light. He looked up into the eyes of Julie Lannes. They were blue, very blue, but with infinite wistful depths in them, and he noticed that her golden hair had faint touches of the sun in it. It was a crown of glory. He remembered that he had seen something like it in the best pictures of the old masters.

"Mademoiselle Julie!" he said.

"You have come back," she said gently. "We have been anxious about you. Philip has been to see you three times."

He noticed that she, too, wore the somber dress with the red cross, and he began to comprehend.

"A nurse," he said. "Why, you are too young for such work!"

"But I am strong, and the wounded are so many, hundreds of thousands, they say. Is it not a time for the women of France to help as much as they can?"

"I suppose so. I've heard that in our civil war the women passed over the battle fields, seeking the wounded and nursed them afterward. But you didn't come here alone, did you, Mademoiselle Julie?"

"Antoine Picard—you remember him—and his daughter Suzanne, are with me. My mother would have come too, but she is ill. She will come later."

"How long have I been here?"

"Four days."

John thought a little. Many and mighty events had happened in four days before he was wounded and many and mighty events may have occurred since.

"Would you mind telling me where we are, Mademoiselle Julie?" he asked.

"I do not know exactly myself, but we are somewhere near the river, Aisne. The German army has turned and is fortifying against us. When the wind blows this way you can hear the rumble of the guns. Ah, there it is now, Mr. Scott!"

John distinctly heard that low, sinister menace, coming from the east, and he knew what it was. Why should he not? He had listened to it for days and days. It was easy enough now to tell the thunder of the artillery from real thunder. He was quite sure that it had never ceased while he was unconscious. It had been going on so long now, as steady as the flowing of a river.

"I've been asking you a lot of questions, Mademoiselle Julie, but I want to ask you one more."

"What is it, Mr. Scott?"

"What happened to me?"

"They say that you were knocked down by a horse, and that when you were falling his knee struck your head. There was a concussion but the surgeon says that when you come out of it you will recover very fast."

"Is the man who says it a good surgeon, one upon whom a fellow can rely, one of the very best surgeons that ever worked on a hurt head?"

"Yes, Mr. Scott. But why do you ask such a question? Is it your odd American way?"

"Not at all. Mademoiselle Julie. I merely wanted to satisfy myself. He knows that I'm not likely to be insane or weak-minded or anything of the kind, because I got in the way of that horse's knee?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Scott, there is not the least danger in the world. Your mind will be as sound as your body. Don't trouble yourself."

She laughed and now John knew that it was she whom he had heard singing the chansonette in that low murmuring tone. What was that little song? Well, it did not matter about the words. The music was that of a soft breeze from the south blowing among roses. John's imaginings were growing poetical. Perhaps there were yet some lingering effects from the concussion.

"Here is the surgeon now," said Mademoiselle Julie. "He will take a look at you and he will be glad to find that what he has predicted has come true."

It was the man in the white jacket, and with that wonderful tangle of black whiskers, like a patch cut out of a scrub forest.

"Well, my young Yankee," he said, "I see that you've come around. You've raised an interesting question in my mind. Since a cavalry horse wasn't able to break it, is the American skull thicker than the skulls of other people?"

"A lot of you Europeans don't seem to think we're civilized."

"But when you fight for us we do. Isn't that so, Mademoiselle Lannes?"

"I think it is."

"War is a curious thing. While it drives people apart it also brings them together. We learn in battle, and its aftermath, that we're very much alike. And now, my young Yankee, I'll be here again in two hours to change that bandage for the last time. I'll be through with you then, and in another day you can go forward to meet the German shells."

"I prefer to run against a horse's knee," said John with spirit.

Surgeon Lucien Delorme laughed heartily.

"I'm confirmed in my opinion that you won't need me after another change of bandages," he said. "We've a couple of hundred thousand cases much worse than yours to tend, and Mademoiselle Lannes will look after you today. She has watched over you, I understand, because you're a friend of her brother, the great flying man, Philip Lannes."

"Yes," said John, "that's it, of course."

Julie herself said nothing.

Surgeon Delorme passed through the bar of brilliant light and disappeared, his place being taken by a gigantic figure with grizzled hair, and the stern face of the thoughtful peasant, the same Antoine Picard who had been left as a guardian over the little house beyond the Seine. John closed his eyes, that is nearly, and caught the glance that the big man gave to Julie. It was protecting and fatherly, and he knew that Antoine would answer for her at any time with his life. It was one remnant of feudalism to which he did not object. He opened his eyes wide and said:

"Well, my good Picard, perhaps you thought you were going to look at a dead American, but you are not. Behold me!"

He sat up and doubled up his arm to show his muscle and power. Picard smiled and offered to shake hands in the American fashion. He seemed genuinely glad that John had returned to the real world, and John ascribed it to Picard's knowledge that he was Lannes' friend.

Julie said some words to Picard, and with a little au revoir to John, went away. John watched her until she was out of sight. He realized again that young French girls were kept secluded from the world, immured almost. But the world had changed. Since a few men met around a table six or seven weeks before and sent a few dispatches a revolution had come. Old customs, old ideas and old barriers were going fast, and might be going faster. War, the leveler, was prodigiously at work.

These were tremendous things, but he had himself to think about too, and personality can often outweigh the universe. Julie was gone, taking a lot of the light with her, but Picard was still there, and while he was grizzled and stern he was a friend.

John sat up quite straight and Picard did not try to keep him from it.

"Picard," he said, "you see me, don't you?"

"I do, sir, with these two good eyes of mine, as good as those in the head of any young man, and fifty is behind me."

"That's because you're not intellectual, Picard, but we'll return to our lamb chops. I am here, I, a soldier of France, though an American—for which I am grateful—laid four days upon my back by a wound. And was that wound inflicted by a shell, shrapnel, bomb, lance, saber, bullet or any of the other noble weapons of warfare? No, sir, it was done by a horse, and not by a kick, either, he jostled me with his knee when he wasn't looking. Would you call that an honorable wound?"

"All wounds received in the service of one's country or adopted country are honorable, sir."

"You give me comfort, Picard. But spread the story that I was not hit by a horse's knee but by a piece of shell, a very large and wicked piece of shell. I want it to get into the histories that way. The greatest of Frenchmen, though he was an Italian, said that history was a fable agreed upon, and you and I want to make an agreement about myself and a shell."

"I don't understand you at all, sir."

"Well, never mind. Tell me how long Mademoiselle Julie is going to stay here. I'm a great friend of her brother, Lieutenant Philip Lannes. Oh, we're such wonderful friends! And we've been through such terrible dangers together!"

"Then, perhaps it's Lieutenant Lannes and not his sister, Mademoiselle Julie, that you wish to inquire about."

"Don't be ironical, Picard. I was merely digressing, which I admit is wrong, as you're apt to distract the attention of your hearer from the real subject. We'll return to Mademoiselle Julie. Do you think she's going to remain here long?"

"I would tell you if I could, sir, but no one knows. I think it depends upon many circumstances. The young lady is most brave, as becomes one of her blood, and the changes in France are great. All of us who may not fight can serve otherwise."

"Why is it that you're not fighting, Picard?"

The great peasant flung up his arms angrily.

"Because I am beyond the age. Because I am too old, they said. Think of it! I, Antoine Picard, could take two of these little officers and crush them to death at once in my arms! There is not in all this army a man who could walk farther than I can! There is not one who could lift the wheel of a cannon out of the mud more quickly than I can, and they would not take me! What do a few years mean?"

"Nothing in your case, Antoine, but they'll take you, later on. Never fear. Before this war is over every country in it will need all the men it can get, whether old or young."

"I fear that it is so," said the gigantic peasant, a shadow crossing his stern face, "but, sir, one thing is decided. France, the France of the Revolution, the France that belongs to its people, will not fall."

John looked at him with a new interest. Here was a peasant, but a thinking peasant, and there were millions like him in France. They were not really peasants in the old sense of the word, but workingmen with a stake in the country, and the mind and courage to defend it. It might be possible to beat the army of a nation, but not a nation in arms.

"No, Picard," said John, "France will not fall."

"And that being settled, sir," said Picard, with grim humor, "I think you'd better lie down again. You've talked a lot for a man who has been unconscious four days."

"You're right, my good Picard, as I've no doubt you usually are. Was I troublesome, much, when I was out in the dark?"

"But little, sir. I've lifted much heavier men, and that Dr. Delorme is strong himself, not afraid, either, to use the knife. Ah, sir, you should have seen how beautifully he worked right under the fire of the German guns! Psst! if need be he'd have taken a leg off you in five minutes, as neatly as if he had been in a hospital in Paris!"

John felt apprehensively for his legs. Both were there, and in good condition.

"If that man ever comes near me with the intention of cutting off one of my legs I'll shoot him, good fellow and good doctor though he may be," he said. "Help me up a little higher, will you, Picard? I want to see what kind of a place we're in."

Picard built up a little pyramid of saddles and knapsacks behind him and John drew himself up with his back against them. The rows and rows of wounded stretched as far as he could see, and there was a powerful odor of drugs. Around him was a forest, of the kind with which he had become familiar in Europe, that is, of small trees, free from underbrush. He saw some distance away soldiers walking up and down and beyond them the vague outline of an earthwork.

"What place is this, anyway, Picard?" he asked.

"It has no name, sir. It's a hospital. It was built in the forest in a day. More than five thousand wounded lie here. The army itself is further on. You were found and brought in by some young officers of that most singular company composed of Americans and English who are always quarreling among one another, but who unite and fight like demons against anybody else."

"A dollar to a cent it was Wharton and Carstairs who brought me here," said John, smiling to himself.

"What does Monsieur say?"

"Merely commenting on some absent friends of mine. But this isn't a bad place, Picard."

The shed was of immense length and breadth and just beyond it were some small buildings, evidently of hasty construction. John inferred that they were for the nurses and doctors, and he wondered which one sheltered Julie Lannes. The forest seemed to be largely of young pines, and the breeze that blew through it was fresh and wholesome. As he breathed it young Scott felt that he was inhaling new life and strength. But the wind also brought upon its edge that far faint murmur which he knew was the throbbing of the great guns, miles and miles away.

"Perhaps, Monsieur had better lie down again now and sleep awhile," said Picard insinuatingly.

"Sleep! I need sleep! Why, Picard, by your own account I've just awakened from a sleep four days and four nights long."

"But, sir, that was not sleep. It was the stupor of unconsciousness. Now your sleep will be easy and natural."

"Very well," said John, who had really begun to feel a little weary, "I'll go to sleep, since, in a way, you order it, but if Mademoiselle Julie Lannes should happen to pass my cot again, will you kindly wake me up?"

"If possible, sir," said Picard, the faintest smile passing over his iron features, and forced to be content with that reply, John soon slept again. Julie passed by him twice, but Picard did not awaken him, nor try. The first time she was alone. Trained and educated like most young French girls, she had seen little of the world until she was projected into the very heart of it by an immense and appalling war. But its effect upon her had been like that upon John. Old manners and customs crumbled away, an era vanished, and a new one with new ideas came to take its place. She shuddered often at what she had seen in this great hospital in the woods, but she was glad that she had come. French courage was as strong in the hearts of women as in the hearts of men, and the brusque but good Dr. Delorme had said that she learned fast. She had more courage, yes, and more skill, than many nurses older and stronger than she, and there was the stalwart Suzanne, who worked with her.

She was alone the first time and she stopped by John's cot, where he slept so peacefully. He was undeniably handsome, this young American who had come to their house in Paris with Philip. And her brother, that wonderful man of the air, who was almost a demi-god to her, had spoken so well of him, had praised so much his skill, his courage, and his honesty. And he had received his wound fighting so gallantly for France, her country. Her beautiful color deepened a little as she walked away.

John awoke again in the afternoon, and the first sound he heard was that same far rumble of the guns, now apparently a part of nature, but he did not linger in any twilight land between dark and light. All the mists of sleep cleared away at once and he sat up, healthy, strong and hungry. Demanding food from an orderly he received it, and when he had eaten it he asked for Surgeon Delorme.

The surgeon did not come for a half hour and then he demanded brusquely what John wanted.

"None of your drugs," replied happy young Scott, "but my uniform and my arms. I don't know your procedure here, but I want you to certify to the whole world that I'm entirely well and ready to return to the ranks."

Surgeon Delorme critically examined the bandage which he had changed that morning, and then felt of John's head at various points.

"A fine strong skull," he said, smiling, "and quite undamaged. When this war is over I shall go to America and make an exhaustive study of the Yankee skull. Has bone, through the influence of climate or of more plentiful food, acquired a more tenacious quality there than it has here? It is a most interesting and complicated question."

"But it's solution will have to be deferred, my good Monsieur Delorme, and so you'd better quit thumping my head so hard. Give me that certificate, because if you don't I'll get up and go without it. Don't you hear those guns out there, doctor? Why, they're calling to me all the time. They tell me, strong and well, again, to come at once and join my comrades of the Strangers, who are fighting the enemy."

"You shall go in the morning," said Surgeon Delorme, putting his broad hand upon young Scott's head. "The effects of the concussion will have vanished then."

"But I want to get up now and put on my uniform; can't I?"

"I know no reason why you shouldn't. There's a huge fellow named Picard around here who has been watching over you, and who has your uniform. I'll call him."

When John was dressed he walked with Picard into the edge of the forest. His first steps were wavering, and his head swam a little, but in a few minutes the dizziness disappeared and his walk became steady and elastic. He was his old self again, strong in every fiber. He would certainly be with the Strangers the next morning.

Many more of the wounded, thousands of them, were lying or sitting on the short grass in the forest. They were the less seriously hurt, and they were cheerful. Some of them sang.

"They'll be going back to the army fast," said Picard. "Unless they're torn by shrapnel nearly all the wounded get well again and quickly. The bullet with the great power is merciful. It goes through so fast that it does not tear either flesh or bone. If you're healthy, if your blood is good, psst! you're well again in a week."

"Do you know if Lieutenant Lannes is expected here?" asked John.

"I heard from Mademoiselle Julie that he would come at set of sun. He has been on another perilous errand. Ah, his is a strange and terrible life, sir. Up there in the sky, a half mile, maybe a mile, above the earth. All the dangers of the earth and those, too, of the air to fight! Nothing above you and nothing below you. It's a new world in which Monsieur Philip Lannes moves, but I would not go in it with him, not for all the treasures of the Louvre!"

He looked up at the calm and benevolent blue sky and shuddered.

John laughed.

"Some of us feel that way," he said. "Many men as brave as any that ever lived can't bear to look down from a height. But sunset is approaching, my gallant Picard, and Lannes should soon be here."

The rays of the sun fell in showers of red gold where they stood, but a narrow band of gray under the eastern horizon showed that twilight was not far away. The two stood side by side staring up at the heavens, where they felt with absolute certainty the black dot would appear at the appointed time. It was a singular tribute to the courage and character of Lannes that all who knew him had implicit faith in his promises, not alone in his honesty of purpose, but in his ability to carry it out in the face of difficulty and danger. The band of gray in the east broadened, but they still watched with the utmost faith.

"I see something to the eastward," said John, "or is it merely a shadow in the sky?"

"I don't think it's a shadow. It must be one of those terrible machines, and perhaps it's that of our brave Monsieur Philip."

"You're right, Picard, it's no shadow, nor is it a bit of black cloud. It's an aeroplane, flying very fast. The skies over Europe hold many aeroplanes these days, but I know all the tricks of the Arrow, all its pretty little ways, its manner of curving, looping and dropping, and I should say that the Arrow, Philip Lannes aboard, is coming."

"I pray, sir, that you are right. I always hold my breath until he is on the ground again."

"Then you'll have to make a record in holding breath, my brave Picard. He is still far, very far, from us, and it will be a good ten minutes before he arrives."

But John knew beyond a doubt, after a little more watching, that it was really the Arrow, and with eager eyes he watched the gallant little machine as it descended in many a graceful loop and spiral to the earth. They hurried forward to meet it, and Lannes, bright-eyed and trim, sprang out, greeting John with a welcome cry.

"Up again," he exclaimed, "and, as I see with these two eyes of mine, as well as ever! And you too, my brave Picard, here to meet me!"

He hastened away with a report, but came back to them in a few minutes.

"Now," he said, "We'll go and see my sister."

John was not at all unwilling.

They found her in one of the new houses of pine boards, and the faithful and stalwart Suzanne was with her. It was the plainest of plain places, inhabited by at least twenty other Red Cross nurses, and John stood on one side until the first greeting of brother and sister was over. Then Lannes, by a word and a gesture, included him in what was practically a family group, although he was conscious that the stalwart Suzanne was watching him with a wary eye.

"Julie and Suzanne," said Lannes, "are going tomorrow with other nurses to the little town of Menouville, where also many wounded lie. They are less well supplied with doctors and nurses than we are here. Dr. Delorme goes also with a small detachment as escort. I have asked that you, Monsieur Jean the Scott, be sent with them. Our brave Picard goes too. Menouville is about eight miles from here, and it's not much out of the way to the front. So you will not be kept long from your Strangers, John."

"I go willingly," said John, "and I'm glad, Philip, that you've seen fit to consider me worth while as a part of the escort."

He spoke quietly, but his glance wandered to Julie Lannes. It may have been a chance, but hers turned toward him at the same time, and the eyes, the blue and the gray, met. Again the girl's brilliant color deepened a little, and she looked quickly away. Only the watchful and grim Suzanne saw.

"Do you have to go away at once, Philip?" asked Julie.

"In one hour, my sister. There is not much rest for the Arrow and me these days, but they are such days as happen perhaps only once in a thousand years, and one must do his best to be worthy. I'm not preaching, little sister, don't think that, but I must answer to every call."

The twilight had spread from east to west. The heavy shadows in the east promised a dark night, but out of the shadows, as always, came that sullen mutter of the ruthless guns. Julie shivered a little, and glanced at the dim sky.

"Must you go up there in the cold dark?" she said. "It's like leaving the world. It's dangerous enough in the day, but you have a bright sky then. In the night it's terrible!"

"Don't you fear for me, little sister," said Lannes. "Why, I like the night for some reasons. You can slip by your enemies in the dark, and if you're flying low the cannon don't have half the chance at you. Besides, I've the air over these regions all mapped and graded now. I know all the roads and paths, the meeting places of the clouds, points suitable for ambush, aerial fields, meadows and forests. Oh, it's home up there! Don't you worry, and do you write, too, to Madame, my mother, in Paris, that I'm perfectly safe."

Lannes kissed her and went away abruptly. John was sure that an attempt to hide emotion caused his brusque departure.

"Believe everything he tells you, Mademoiselle Julie," he said. "I've come to the conclusion that nothing can ever trap your brother. Besides courage and skill he has luck. The stars always shine for him."

"They're not shining tonight," said Picard, looking up at the dusky sky.

"But I believe, Mr. Scott, that you are right," said Julie.

"He'll certainly come to us at Menouville tomorrow night," said John, speaking in English—all the conversation hitherto had been in French, "and I think we'll have a pleasant ride through the forest in the morning, Miss Lannes. You'll let me call you Miss Lannes, once or twice, in my language, won't you? I like to hear the sound of it."

"I've no objection, Mr. Scott," she replied also in English. She did not blush, but looked directly at him with bright eyes. John was conscious of something cool and strong. She was very young, she was French, and she had lived a sheltered life, but he realized once more that human beings are the same everywhere and that war, the leveler, had broken down all barriers.

"I've not heard who is to be our commander, Miss Lannes," he continued in English, "but I'll be here early in the morning. May I wish you happy dreams and a pleasant awakening, as they say at home?"

"But you have two homes now, France and America."

"That's so, and I'm beginning to love one as much as the other. Any way, to the re-seeing, Miss Lannes, which I believe is equivalent to au revoir."

He made a very fine bow, one that would have done credit to a trained old courtier, and withdrew. The fierce and watchful eyes of Suzanne followed him.

John was up at dawn, as strong and well as he had ever been in his life. As he was putting on his uniform an orderly arrived with a note from Lieutenant Hector Legare, telling him to report at once for duty with a party that was going to Menouville.