"Do you notice," he said, looking down through the glass, "that house that looks as if it was whitewashed? It's far away from the others."

Archer took the glass and looking down saw a little white house with a heavy roof of thatch. A tipsy, ramshackle fence surrounded it and in the enclosure several sheep were grazing. The whole poor farm, if such it was, was at the end of a long rustic overgrown lane and quite a distance from the cluster of houses which constituted the hamlet. By scrambling down the rugged hillside one could reach this house without entering the hamlet at all.

"If I dared, I'd make the break," said Tom.

"Suppose they should be Gerrmans living therre?" Archer suggested. "I wouldn't risk it. Can't you see therre's a German flag on a flagpole?"

"That's just it," said Tom. "If I knew they were French people I could show them Frenchy's button. If I was sure this uniform, or whatever you call it, was all right, I'd take a chance."

"It's all right at a distance, anyway," Archer encouraged; "as long as nobody can see yourr face or speak to you."

It was a pretty risky business and both realized it. After three days of successful flight to run into the very jaws of recapture by an ill-considered move was not at all to Tom's liking, yet he felt sure that it would be equally risky to penetrate into that dark wilderness which stretched away toward the Swiss border without first ascertaining something of its extent and character, and what the prospect was of getting through it unseen. Moreover, they were hungry.

Yet it was twilight and the distant river had become a dark ribbon and the outlines of the poor houses below them blurred and indistinct in the gathering darkness before Tom could bring himself to re-enter the haunts of men.

"You stay here," he said, "and I'll go down and pike around. There's one thing, that house is very old and people don't move around here like they do in America. So if I see anything that makes me think the house is French then probably the people are French too."

It was a sensible thought, more dependable indeed than Tom imagined, for in poor Alsace and Lorraine, of all places, people who loved their homes enough to remain in them under foreign despotism would probably continue living in them generation after generation. There is no moving day in Europe.



CHAPTER XV

HE WHO HAS EYES TO SEE

It was quite dark when Tom scrambled down and, with his heart beating rapidly, stole cautiously across the hubbly ground toward the dilapidated brush fence which enclosed the place. The disturbing thought occurred to him that where there were sheep there was likely to be a dog, but he would not turn back.

He realized that he was gambling with those hard-won days of freedom, that any minute he might be discovered and seized. But the courage which his training as a scout had given him did not forsake him, and he crossed the fence and stealthily approached the house, which was hardly more than a whitewashed cabin with two small windows, one door and a disheveled roof, entirely too big for it as it seemed to Tom. The odd conceit occurred to him that it ought to be brushed and combed like a shocky head of hair. Within there was a dim light, and protecting each window was a rough board shutter, hinged at the top and held open at an angle by a stick.

He crept cautiously up and examined these shutters with minutest care. He even felt of one of them and found it to be old and rotten. Then he felt to see if his precious button was safe in his pocket.

Evidently the dilapidated shutter suggested something to him, for he glanced about as if looking for something else, and seemed encouraged. Now he stole a quick look this way or that to anticipate the approach of any one, and then looked carefully about again.

At last his eyes lit upon the flagpole which was projected diagonally from the house, with the flag, which he knew must be the German flag, depending from it. The distant sight of this flag had quite discouraged Archer's hopes, but Tom knew that the compulsory display of the Teuton colors was no indication of the sentiment of the people.

He was more interested in the rough, home-made flagpole which he ventured to bend a little so as to bring its end within reach. This he examined with a care entirely disproportionate to the importance of the crude, whittled handiwork. He pushed the drooping flag aside rather impatiently as it fell over his face, and felt of the end of the pole and scrutinized it as best he could in the darkness.

It was roughly carved and intended to be ornamental, swelling into a kind of curved ridge surmounted by a dull, dome-like point. He felt it all over, then cautiously bending the pole down within reach of his mouth, he bit into the wood and deposited the two or three loose splinters in his pocket.

Then he hurried back up the hill to rejoin Archer.

"Let me have the flashlight," he said with rather more excitement than he often showed. And he would say no more till he had examined the little splinter of wood in its glare.

"It's all right," he said; "we're safe in going there. See this? It's a splinter from the flagpole——"

"A souveneerr!" Archer interrupted.

"There you go again," said Tom. "Who's talking about souvenirs? See how white and fresh the wood is—look. That's off the end of the pole where it's carved into kind of a fancy topknot. And it was whittled inside of a year."

"I could whittle it inside of an hour," said Archer.

"I mean it was whittled not longer than a year ago, 'cause even the weather hasn't got into it yet. And it's whittled like a fleur-de-lis—kind of," Tom added triumphantly.

"Why didn't you bring the whole of it?"

"When they were building the shacks at Temple Camp," said Tom, "there was a carpenter who was a Frenchman. I was good friends with him and he told me a lot of stuff. He always had some wine in his dinner pail. He showed me how French carpenters nail shingles. Instead of keeping the nails in their mouths like other carpenters do, they keep them up their sleeves and they can drop them down into their hands one by one as fast as they need them. They hit 'em four times instead of two—do you know why?"

"To drive 'em in," suggested Archer.

"'Cause in France they don't have cedar shingles, like we do; they have shingles made out of hard wood. And they get so used to hitting the nail four raps that they can't stop it—that's what he said."

"Here's another one," said Archer. "You can't drive a nail with a sponge—no matter how you soak it."

"He told me some other things, too," said Tom, ignoring Archer's flippancy. "He used to talk to me while he was eating his lunch. The way he got started telling me about the different way they do things in Europe was when he put the shutters on the big shack. He put the hinges at the top 'cause that's always the way they do in France. He said in Italy they put 'em on the left side. In America they put them on the right side—except when they have two.

"So when I saw the shutters on that old house I happened to notice that the hinges were at the top and that made me think it was probably a Frenchman's home."

"Maybe it isn't now even if it was when the shutterrs werre made," said Archer skeptically.

"Then I happened to remember something else that man told me. Maybe you think the fleur-de-lis is only a fancy kind of an emblem, but it ain't. He told me the old monks that used to carve things—no matter what they carved you could always find a cross, or something like a cross in it. 'Cause they think that way, see? The same as sailors always tattoo fishes and ships and things on their arms. He said some places in the Black Forest the toymakers are French peasants and you can always tell if a fancy thing is carved by them on account of the shape of the fleur-de-lis. It ain't that they do it on purpose," he added; "it's because it's in their heads, like. They don't always make regular fleur-de-lis, but they make that kind of curves. He told me a lot about Napoleon, too," he added irrelevantly.

"So when I happened to think about that, I looked around to see if I could find anything to prove it, kind of. It don't make any difference if the German flag is on that pole; they've got to do that. When I saw the topknot was carved kind of like a fleur-de-lis I knew French people must have made it. And it was only carved lately, too," he added simply, "'cause the wood is fresh."

"Gee whillicums, but you're a peach, Slady!" said Archer ecstatically. "Shall we take a chance?"

"Of course I don't know for sure," Tom added, "but we've got to go by signs—just like Indian signs along a trail. If you pick up an old flint arrowhead you know you're on an Indian trail."

"Christopherr Columbus! But I'd like to find one of those arrowheads now!" said Archer.



CHAPTER XVI

THE WEAVER OF MERNON

But for all these fine deductions, you are not to suppose that Tom and Archer approached the little house without trepidation. The nearer they came to it the less dependable seemed Tom's theory.

"It might be all right in a story book," Archer said, backsliding into dismal apprehensions. But before he had a chance to lose his courage Tom had knocked softly on the door. They could hear a scuffling sound inside and then the door was opened cautiously by a little stooping old man with a pale, deeply wrinkled face, and long, straight white hair. From his ragged peasant's attire he must have been very poor and the primitive furnishings in the dimly lighted room, of which they caught a glimpse, confirmed this impression. But he had a pair of keen blue eyes which scrutinized the travellers rather tremulously, evidently supposing them to be German soldiers.

"What have I done?" he asked fearfully in German.

Tom wasted no time trying to understand him, but bringing forth his iron button he held it out silently.

The effect was electrical; the old man clutched the button eagerly and poured forth a torrent of French as he dragged the boys one after the other into his poor abode and shut the door.

"We're Americans," said Tom. "We can't understand."

"It iss all ze same," said the man. "I will talk in ze American. How you came with ziss button—yess? Who have sent you?"

To Tom's surprise he spoke English better than either Florette or her brother, and the boys were infinitely grateful and relieved to hear their own language spoken in this remote place.

"We are Americans," said Tom. "We escaped from the prison camp across the Alsace border, and we're on our way to the frontier. I knew you were French on account of the fleur-de-lis on the end of your flagpole——"

"And ze button—yess?" the old man urged, interrupting him.

Tom told him the whole story of Frenchy and the Leteurs, and of how he had come by his little talisman.

"I have fought in zat regiment," the old man said, "many years before you are born. I have seen Alsace lost—yess. If you were Germans I would die before I would give you food. But I make you true welcome. I have been many years in America. Ah, I have surprise you."

"What is this place?" Archer ventured to ask.

"Ziss is Mernon—out of fifty-two men they take forty-one to ze trenches. My two sons, who are weavers too, they must go. Now they take the women and the young girls."

Further conversation developed the fact that the old man had worked in a silk mill in America for many years and had returned to Alsace and this humble place of his birth only after both of his sons, who like himself were weavers, had been forced into the German service. "If I do not come back and claim my home, it is gone," he said. So he had returned and was working the old hand loom with his aged fingers, here in the place of his birth.

He was greatly interested in the boys' story and gave them freely of his poor store of food which they ate with a relish. Apparently he was not under the cloud of suspicion or perhaps his age and humble condition and the obscurity and remoteness of his dwelling gave him a certain immunity. In any event, he carried his loathing of the Germans with a fine independence.

"In America," he said, "ze people do not know about ziss—ziss beast. Here we know. Here in little Mernon our women must work to make ze road down to ze river. Why is zere needed a road to ze river? Why is zere needed ze new road above Basel? To bring back so many prisoners—wounded? Bah! Ziss is what zey say. Lies! I have been a soldier. Eighty-two years I am old. And much I have travelled. So can I see. What you say in Amerique—make two and two together—yess? Zere will be tramping of soldiers over zese roads to invade little Switzerland. Am I right? If it is necessaire—yess! Necessaire! Faugh!"

This was the first open statement the boys had heard as to the new roads, all of which converged suspiciously in the direction of the Swiss frontier. They were for bringing home German wounded; they were to facilitate internal communication; they were for this, that and the other useful and innocent purpose, but they all ran toward the Swiss border or to some highway which ran thither.

"Ziss is ze last card they have to play—to stab little Switzerland in ze back and break through," the old man said. "In ze south runs a road from ze trench line across to ze Rhine. Near zere I have an old comrade—Blondel. Togezzer we fight side by side, like brothers. When ze boat comes, many times he comes to see me. Ze last time he come he tell me how ze new road goes past his house—all women and young girls working. It comes from ziss other road zat goes from ze trenches over to ze Rhine. South it goes—you see?" he added shrewdly. "So now if you are so clevaire to see a fleur-de-lis where none is intentioned, so zen you can tell, maybe, why will zey build a road zat goes south?"

Tom, fascinated by the old man's sagacity and vehemence, only shook his head.

"Ah, you are not so clevaire to suspect! Ziss is Amerique! Nevaire will she suspect."

Tom did not altogether like this reference to Uncle Sam's gullibility, but he contented himself with believing that it was meant as a thing of the past.

"They can't flim-flam us now," Archer ventured.

"Flam-flim—no," the old man said, with great fervor.

"Maybe that's where they took my friend's sister and his mother," Tom said.

"I will tell you vere zey take them," the old man interrupted. "You know Alsace—no? So! See! I tell you." He approached, poking Tom's chest with his bony finger and screwing up his blue eyes until he seemed a very demon of shrewdness. They wondered if he were altogether sane.

"Nuzzing can zey hide from Melotte," he went on. "Far south, near Basel, zere lives my comrade—Blondel. To him must you show your button—yess. In Norne he lives."

"We'll write that down," said Tom.

"Nuzzing you write down," the old man said sharply, clutching Tom's arm. "In your brain where you are so clevaire—zere you write it. So! You are not so clevaire as Melotte. Now I will show you how you shall find Mam'selle," he went on with a sly wink.

Emptying some wool out of a paper bag, he pressed the wrinkles from the bag with his trembling old hand and bending over the rough table close to the lantern, he drew a map somewhat similar to, though less complete than, the one given here.



There is nothing like a map to show one "where he is at," to quote Archer's phrase, and the boys followed with great interest as Melotte penciled the course of the Rhine and the places which he wished to emphasize in the southern part of Alsace.

"Here at Norne lives my comrade, Blondel," he said. "Two years we work togezzer at Passake—you know? In ze great silk mills."

"Passaic," said Tom; "that's near Bridgeboro, where I live."

"Passake, yess. So now you are so clevaire to know who shall leeve in a house, I will tell you how you shall know ze house of my comrade, Blondel. By ze blue flag with one black spot! Yess? You know what ziss shall be? Billet!" He gave Archer a dig in the ribs as if this represented the high water mark of sagacity.

"Oh, I know," said Archer; "it means Gerrman officerrs are billeted therre. Go-o-od night! Not for us!"

The old man did not seem quite to understand, but he turned again to his map. "Here now is ze new road," he said, drawing it with his shaky old hand. "From ze Rhine road it runs—south—so. Now you are so clevaire—Yankee clevaire, ha, ha, ha!" he laughed with a kind of irritating hilarity; "why should zey make ziss road? From ze north—from Leteur—all around—zey bring our women to make ziss road. Ziss is where Mam'selle is—so! Close by it lives my comrade, Blondel. Ziss is noble army to command, ugh!" He gritted his teeth. "All are women!"

Tom looked at the map, as old Melotte poised his skinny finger above it and peered eagerly up into his face from the depths of his scraggly white hair. It was little enough Tom knew about military affairs and he thought that this lonesome old weaver was in his dotage. But surely this new road could be for but one purpose, and that was the quick transfer of troops from the Alsatian front to the Swiss border. And the sudden conscription of women and girls for the making of the road seemed plausible enough. Could it be that this furnished a clew to the whereabouts of Florette Leteur? And if it did, what hope was there of reaching her, or of rescuing her?

He listened only abstractedly to the old man's rambling talk of Germany's intention to violate Swiss neutrality if that became necessary to her purpose. His eyes were half closed as he looked at the rough sketch and he saw there considerably more than old Melotte had drawn.

He saw Frenchy's sister Florette, slender and frail, wielding some heavy implement, doing her enforced bit in this work of shameless betrayal. He could see her eyes, sorrow-laden and filled with fear. He could see her as she had stood talking with him that night in the arbor. He could see her, orphaned and homeless, slaving under the menacing shadow of a German officer who sprawled and lorded it in the poor home of this Blondel close by the new road. Here he climb to drop ze grapes down my neck. Bad boy! Strange, how that particular phrase of hers singled itself out and stuck in his memory.

"So now you are so clevaire," he half heard old Melotte saying to Archer.

And Tom Slade said nothing, only thought, and thought, and thought....



CHAPTER XVII

THE CLOUDS GATHER

"We never thought about asking him to translate that letterr," said Archer.

"I'm not thinking about that letter," Tom answered. "All I'm thinking about now is what he said about that new road. I'm not even thinking about their going through Switzerland, either," he added with great candor. "I'm thinking about Frenchy's sister. If they've got her working there I'm going to rescue her. I made up my mind to that."

"Some job!" commented Archer.

"It don't make any difference how much of a job it is," said Tom, with that set look about his mouth that Archer was coming to know and respect.

They were clambering up the hillside again, for not all old Melotte's hospitable urging could induce Tom to remain in the hut until daylight.

He would have liked to take along the rough sketch which the old man had made, but this Melotte had strenuously opposed, saying that no maps should be carried by strangers in Germany. So Tom had to content himself with the old man's rather rambling directions.

Several things remained indelibly impressed on his mind. Old Melotte had told him that upon the western bank of the Rhine about fifteen miles above the Swiss border was an old gray castle with three turrets, and that directly opposite this and not far from the Alsatian bank was the little village of Norne.

"The way I make it out," said Archer, "is that this Blondel, whoeverr he is, has got some Gerrman officerr wished on him and that geezerr has charrge of the women worrking on the new road. I'd like to know how you expect to get within a mile of those people in the daytime."

"We got plenty of time to think it out," Tom answered doggedly, "'cause we'll be in the woods a couple of days and nights and that's where thoughts come to you."

"We'd be big fools, afterr gettin' all the way down to the frontierr to cross the riverr and go huntin' forr a road in broad daylight," said Archer; "we'd only get caught."

"Well, we'll get caught then," retorted Tom.

"Anyway, I think the old fellow's half crazy," Archer persisted. "He's got roads on the brain. He jumps all around from Norrne to Passaic and——"

"He gave us something to eat," said Tom curtly.

"Well, I didn't say he didn't, did I?" Archer snapped. "If we'd had any sense, we'd have stayed therre all night like he wanted us to. Therre wouldn't have been any dangerr in that old shack, a hundred miles from nowherre."

"We're safest in the hills," said Tom.

"It's going to rain, too," Archer grumbled.

Tom made no answer and they scrambled in silence up the uninviting hillside, till old Melotte's shack could be seen far below with the dim light in its windows.

"You'rre so particularr about not bein' caught," Archer began again, "it's a wonder you wouldn't think morre about that when we get down close to the borrderr. If I've got to be caught at all I'd ratherr be caught now."

They had regained the height above the little hamlet and to the south they could see the clustering lights of Strassbourg and here and there a moving light upon the river.

"We've got to cross that, too, I s'pose," Archer said sulkily.

Tom did not answer. The plain fact was that they were both thoroughly tired out, with that dog-tiredness which comes suddenly as a reaction after days of nerve-racking apprehension and hard physical effort. For the first two days their nervous excitement had kept them up. But now they were fagged and the tempting invitation to remain at the hovel had been too strong for Archer. Moreover, this new scheme of Tom's to divert their course in a hazardous quest for Florette Leteur was not at all to his liking. But mostly he was tired and everything looks worse when one is tired.

"We're not going to keep on hiking it tonight, are we?" he demanded.

"You said yourself that the old man was kind of—a little off, like," Tom answered patiently. "He's got the bug that he's very shrewd and that he can always get the best of the Germans. Do you think I'd take a chance staying there? We took a chance as it was."

"Yes, and you'rre going to take a biggerr one if you go chasing all over Gerrmany after that girrl. You won't find herr. That was a lot of rattlebrain talk anyway—we're so clevaire!"

"There's no use making fun of him," said Tom; "he helped us."

"We'll get caught, that'll be the end of it," said Archer sullenly. Tom did not answer.

"You seem to be the boss of everything, anyway."

They scrambled diagonally down the eastern slope of the high ground, heading always toward the river and after an hour's travelling came out upon its shore.

"Here's where we'll have to cross if we're going to cross at all," said Tom. "What do you say?"

"I haven't got anything to say," said Archer; "you're doin' all the saying."

"If we go any farther south," Tom went on patiently, "we'll be too near Strassbourg and we're likely to meet boats. Listen."

From across the river came the spent whistle of a locomotive accompanied by the rattling of a hurrying train, the steady sound, thin and clear in the still night, mingling with its own echoes. A few lights, widely separated, were visible across the water and one, high up, reassured Tom that the mountains, the foothills of which they had followed, continued at no great distance from the opposite shore.

There were welcoming fastnesses over there, he knew, and a dim, wide belt of forest extending southward. There, safe from the haunts of men, or at least with timely warning of any hamlets nestling in those sombre depths, he and his comrade might press southward toward that promised land, the Swiss border.

Yet, strangely enough (for one side of a river is pretty much like the other) Tom felt a certain regret at the thought of leaving Alsace. Perhaps his memory of the Leteurs had something to do with this. Perhaps he had just the boyish feeling that it would change their luck. And he knew that over there he would be truly in the enemy's country, with the magic of his little talisman vanished in air.

Yet right here he must decide between open roads and stealthy hospitality and that silent, embracing hospitality which the lonesome heights would offer. And he decided in favor of the lonesome heights. Perhaps after all it was not the enemy's country, though the names of Baden and Schwarzwald certainly had a hostile sound.

But the rugged mountains and dim woods are never enemies of the scout, and perhaps Tom Slade of Temple Camp felt that even the Schwarzwald, which is the Black Forest, would forget its allegiance to whisper its secrets in his ear.



CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE RHINE

"What do you say?" said Tom. "It's up to both of us."

"Oh, don't mind me," Archer answered sarcastically. "I don't count. I know one thing—I'm going to head straight for the Swiss borderr. If crossing the river herre's the quickest way to do it, then that's what I'm going to do, you can bet!"

For a moment Tom did not speak, then looking straight at Archer, he said,—

"You don't forget how she helped us, do you?"

"I'm not saying anything about that," said Archer. "My duty's to Uncle Sam. You've got the crazy notion now that you want to rescue a girrl, just like fellerrs do in story books. If you'rre going to be thinking about herr all the time I might as well go by myself. I could get along all right, if it comes to that."

"Well, I couldn't," said Tom, with a note of earnestness in his voice. "Anyway, there's no use of our scrapping about it 'cause I don't suppose we'll find her. As long as we're going south through the mountains we might as well see if we can pick out Norne with the glass. Maybe we could even see that feller Blondel's house. The old man said the west slopes of the mountains were steep and that they run close to the river down there, so we ought to be able to pick out Norne with the glass. There isn't any harm in that, is there?" he added conciliatingly, "as long as we've got the glass?"

Archer maintained a sullen silence.

"I know we've got to think about Uncle Sam, and I know you're patriotic," said Tom generously, "and we can't afford to be taking big chances. But if you had known her brother, you'd feel the way I do—that's one sure thing."

"I wouldn't run the risk of getting pinched and sent back to prison just on account of a girrl," said Archer scornfully. "That's one sure thing," he added, sulkily mimicking Tom's phrase.

"That ain't the way it is," said Tom, flushing a little. "I ain't—if that's what you mean. Anyway, I admit we got to be careful, and I promise you if we can't spy out the house and the road with the glass I won't cross the river again till we get to the border."

"First thing you know somebody'll come along if we keep on standing here," said Archer.

"Here, you take one of these rubber gloves," said Tom. "Shut the glass and see if it'll go inside. I'll put the flashlight and the compass in the other one. It's going to rain, too. Here, let me do it," he added rather tactlessly, as he closed the little telescope and forced its smaller end down into the longest of the big glove fingers. "Twist the top of it and turn the edges over, see?" he added, doing it himself, "and it's watertight. I can make a watertight stopple for a bottle with a long strip of paper, but you got to know how to wind it," he added, with clumsy disregard of his companion's mood. Tom was a hopeless bungler in some ways.

"Oh, surre, you can do anything," said Archer.

"Maybe it would be best if you held it in your teeth," said Tom thoughtfully; "unless you can swim with it in your hand."

The compass and the flashlight, which indeed were more susceptible of damage from the water than the precious glass, were encased in the other rubber glove, and the two fugitives waded out into the black, silent river.

Scarcely had their feet left the bottom when the first drop of rain fell upon Tom's head, and a chill gust of wind caught him and bore him a yard or two out of his course. He spluttered and looked about for Archer, but could see nothing in the darkness. He did not want to call for he knew how far voices carry across the water, and though the spot was isolated he would take no chances.

It rained hard and the wind, rising to a gale, lashed the black water into whitecaps. Tom strove vainly to make headway against the storm, but felt himself carried, willy-nilly, he knew not where. He tried to distinguish the light beyond the Baden shore, which he had selected for a beacon, but he could not find it. At last he called to Archer.

"I'm going to turn back," he said; "come on—are you all right?"

If Archer answered his voice was drowned by the wind and rain. For a few moments Tom struggled against the elements, hoping to regain the Alsatian shore. His one guiding instinct in all the hubbub was the conviction that the wind smelled like an east wind and that it ought to carry him back to the nearer shore. He would have given a good deal for a glimpse of his precious little compass now.

"Where are you?" he called again. "The light's gone. Let the wind carry you back—it's east."

He could hear no answer save the mocking wind and the breaking of the water. This latter sound made him think the shore was not far distant. But when, after a few moments, he did not feel the bottom, his heart sank. He had been lost in the woods and as a tenderfoot he had known the feeling of panic despair. And he had been in the ocean and seen his ship go down with a torpedo's jagged rent in her side. But he had never been lost in the water in the sense of losing all his bearings in the darkness. For a minute it quite unnerved him and his stout heart sank within him.

Then out of the tumult came a thin, spent voice, barely audible and seeming a part of the troubled voices of the night.

"——lost——," it said; "——going down——"

Tom listened eagerly, his heart still, his blood cold within him.

"Keep calling," he answered, "so I'll know where you are. I'll get to you all right—keep your nerve."

He listened keenly, ready to challenge the force of the storm with all his young skill and strength, and thinking of naught else now. But no guiding voice answered.

Could he have heard aright? Surely, there was no mistaking. It was a human voice that had spoken and whatever else it had said that one, tragic word had been clearly audible:

"——down——"

Archer had gone down.



CHAPTER XIX

TOM LOSES HIS FIRST CONFLICT WITH THE ENEMY

"Down!"

For the first time in Tom Slade's life a sensation of utter despair gripped him and it was not until several seconds had elapsed, while he was tossed at the mercy of the storm, that he was able to get a grip on himself. He struck out frantically and for just a brief minute was guilty of a failing which he had never yielded to—the perilous weakness of being rattled and hitting hard at nothing. In swimming, above all things, this is futile and dangerous, and presently Tom regained his mental poise and struck out calmly, swimming in the direction in which the wind bore him, for there was nothing else to do. Not that his effort helped him much, but he knew the good rule that one should never be passive in a crisis, for inaction is as depressing to the spirit as frantic exertion is to the body. And he knew that by swimming he could keep his "morale"—a word which he had heard a good deal lately.

His heart was sick within him and a kind of cold desperation seized him. Archer, whom he had known away back home in America, whom he had found by chance in the German prison camp, who had trudged over the hills and through the woods with him, was lost. He would never see him again. Archer, who was always after souvenirs....

These were not thoughts exactly, but they flitted through Tom's consciousness as he struggled to keep his head clear of the tempestuous waters. And even in his own desperate plight he recalled that their last words had been words of discord, for he knew now (generous as he was) that he was to blame for this dreadful end of all their fine hopes—that Archer had been right—they should have stayed at Melotte's hovel. Amid the swirl of the waters, as he swam he knew not where, he remembered how Archer had said he ought to think of his duty to Uncle Sam and not imperil his chance to help by going after Florette Leteur.

He was sick, utterly sick, and nearer to hopelessness than he had ever been in his life; but he struck out in a kind of mechanical resignation, believing that the wind and the trend of the water must bring him to one shore or the other before he was exhausted. There was no light anywhere, no clew or beacon of any sort in that wild blackness, and since he therefore had no reason to oppose his strength to the force of the storm he swam steadily in the direction in which it carried him. It made no difference. Nothing mattered now....

After a while the noise of the lashing changed to that lapping sound which only contact with the land can give, and soon Tom could distinguish a solid mass outlined in the hollow blackness of the night. He had no guess whether it was the Baden or the Alsatian shore that he was approaching nor how far north or south he had been carried. Nor did he much care.

His foot touched something hard which brought him to the realization that he must lessen the force of his advance or perhaps have his life dashed out upon a rocky shore; and presently he was staggering forward, brushing his hair away from his eyes, wondering where he was, and scarcely sensible of anything—his head throbbing, his whole body on the verge of exhaustion.

"It's my fault—anyway—I got to admit it——" he thought, "and—it serves—me—right."

One firm resolution came to him. Now that Providence had seen fit to cast him ashore, if he was to be permitted to continue his flight alone, he would go straight for his goal, the Swiss border, and not be led astray (that is what he called it, led astray) by any other enterprise. His duty as a soldier, and he thought of himself as a soldier now, was clear. His business was to help Uncle Sam win the war and he must leave it to Uncle Sam to put an end to the stealing of young girls and to restore them to their homes. He saw himself now, as Archer had depicted him, in the silly role of a "story book hero" and he felt ashamed. He knew that General Pershing would not have sent him rescuing girls, and that the best way he could help France, and even the Leteurs, was to hurry up and get into the trenches where he belonged. Yes, Archer was right. And with a pang of remorse Tom remembered how Archer had said it, "rescuing a girrl!" He would never hear Archer talk like that any more....

He had more than once been close enough to death to learn to keep his nerve in the presence of it, but the loss of his companion quite unnerved him. It had not occurred to him that anything could happen to Archer, who claimed himself that he always landed right side up because he was lucky. Tom could not realize that he was gone.

Still, comrades were lost to each other every day in that far-flung trench line and in that bloody sea of northern France friends were parted and many went down.

"Down——"

How that awful word had sounded—long drawn out and faint in the storm and darkness!

He stumbled over a rocky space and ran plunk into something solid. As he looked up he could distinguish the top of it; uneven and ragged it seemed against the blackness of the night. Whatever it was, it seemed to be slender and rather high, and the odd thought came to him that he was on the deck of some mammoth submarine, looking up at the huge conning tower. Perhaps it was because he had once been rescued by a submarine, or perhaps just because his wits were uncertain and his nerves unstrung, but it was fully a minute before he realized that he was on solid earth—or rock. It afforded him a measure of relief.

What that grim black thing could be that frowned upon him he did not know, and he staggered around it, feeling it with his hands. It was of masonry and presently he came to what was evidently a door, which opened as he leaned against it. Its silent hospitality was not agreeable to him; the very thought of a possible German habitation roused him out of his fatigue and despair, and with a sudden quick instinct he drew stealthily back until presently he felt the water lapping his feet again.

Here, at a comparatively safe distance, he paused for breath after what he felt to be a worse peril than the storm, and felt for the one trusty friend he had left—the little compass. The precious rubber glove containing this and the flashlight was safe in his pocket, and he held both under his coat and tried to throw the light upon the compass and get his bearings. But the glove must have leaked, for the battery was dead. The little compass, which was to prove so useful in days to come, was probably still loyal after its immersion, but he could not distinguish the dial clearly.

He knew he must go southeast, where the dim woods seemed now to beckon him like a living mother. Never had the thought of the mountains and the lonely forest been so grateful to this scout before. If only he had strength to get there....

"What you got to do—you do," he panted slowly under his breath, frowning at the compass and trying in the darkness to see which way that faithful little needle turned. Once, twice, he looked fearfully up toward that grim building.

Then he decided, as best he might, which direction was southeast and dragged his aching legs that way until presently he was stumbling in the water again.

Surely, he thought, the river ran almost north and south, and southeast must lead on into the mountains. But perhaps he had not read the compass aright or perhaps he was on the edge of a deep bay, which would mean water extending still westward. Or perhaps he was on the Alsatian shore.

For a moment he stood bewildered. Then he tried to read the compass again and started forward in the direction which he thought to be west. If he were on the Alsatian shore, this should take him away from that black, heartless Teuton ruin.

But it only took him into a chaos of broken, shiny rock where he stumbled and fell, cutting his knee and making his head throb cruelly.

And then Tom Slade, seeing that fate was against him, and having used all the resource and young strength that he had, to get to the boys "over there," gave up and lay among the jagged rocks, holding his head with one bruised hand and thinking hopelessly of this end of all his efforts.



CHAPTER XX

A NEW DANGER

He did not know how long he lay there, but after a while he crept along over the slimy rocks and because it was not easy to stand alone he limped to that grim, threatening structure, and leaned against it, trying to collect his faculties.

"If he was—only here now," he breathed, half aloud, "I'd let him—I'd be willing not to be boss—like he said. That's the—trouble—with me—I'm always wanting to—be——Oh, my head——"

He knew now, what it was a pretty hard thing for one of his indomitable temperament to realize, that things were out of his hands, that he could go no farther. North or south or east or west, he could go no farther. Capture or firing squad or starvation and death from exhaustion, he could go no farther. His name would not be sent home on the casualty lists, any more than Archer's would, but they had tried, and done their bit as well as they could.

There was one faint hope left; perhaps this house was not occupied, or if it was on the Alsatian side of that terrible river (a true Hun river, if there ever was one) it might be occupied by a Frenchman. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, Tom pushed the door open and staggered inside. Dazed and suffering as he was, he was conscious of the rain pelting on the roof above him and sounding more audibly than outside where the boisterous river drowned the sound of the downpour.

Something big and soft which caught in his feet was directly before him and he stumbled and fell upon it. And there he lay, pressing his throbbing forehead, which seemed bursting with fresh pain from the force of his fall.

He had a reckless impulse to end all doubt by calling aloud in utter abandonment. But this impulse passed, perhaps because he did not have the strength or spirit to call.

Soon, from mere exhaustion, he fell into a fitful, feverish slumber accompanied by a nightmare in which the lashing of the wind and rain outside were conjured into the clangor and hoof beats of cavalry and he was hopelessly enmeshed in a barbed-wire entanglement.

With the first light of dawn he saw that he was lying upon a mass of fishnet and that his feet and arms were entangled in its meshes.

He was in a small, circular apartment with walls of masonry and a broken spiral stairway leading up to a landing beside a narrow window. Rain streamed down from this window and trickled in black rivulets all over the walls. A very narrow doorway opened out of this circular room, from which the door was broken away, leaving two massive wrought-iron hinges sticking out conspicuously into the open space. As Tom's eyes fell upon these he thought wistfully of how eagerly Archer would have appropriated one of them as a "souveneerr." Poor, happy-go-lucky Archer!

"I thought he was a good swimmer," Tom thought, "because he lived so near Black Lake.[A] It was all my fault. He probably just didn't like to say he wasn't——"

[Footnote A: The lake on the shore of which Temple Camp was situated.]

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to ease the pain in his head and collect his scattered senses. Evidently, he was alone in this dank place, for there was no sign of occupancy nor any sound but the light patter of rain without, for the storm had spent its fury and subsided into a steady drizzle.

He dragged himself to his feet, and though his knee was stiff he was glad to discover that he was not incapable of walking. He believed he was not feverish now and that his headache was caused by shock and bruising rather than by illness. Perhaps, he thought, he was not so badly off after all. Except for Archer....

Limping to the doorway he peered cautiously out. The sky was dull and hazy and a steady, drizzling rain fell. There is something about a drear, rainy day which "gets" one, if he has but a makeshift shelter; and this bleak, gray morning carried poor Tom's mind back with a rush to rainy days at his beloved Temple Camp when scouts were wont to gather in tent and cabin for yarns.

He now saw that he was on a little rocky islet in the middle of the river and that the structure which had sheltered him was a small tower, very much like a lighthouse except that it was not surmounted by a light, having instead that rough turret coping familiar in medieval architecture. Far off, through the haze, he could distinguish, close to the shore, a gray castle with turrets, which from his compass he knew to be on the Baden side. He thought he could make out a road close to the shore, and other houses, and he wished that he had the spy-glass so that he might study this locality which he hoped to pass through.

Of course, he no longer cherished any hope of finding Florette Leteur; Archer's chiding words still lingered in his mind, and, moreover, without the glass he could do nothing for he certainly would never have thought of entering Norne without first "piking" it from a safe vantage point.

There was nothing to do now but nurse his swollen knee and rest, in the hope that by night he would be able to swim to the Baden shore and get into the hills. Never before had he so longed for the forest.

"If it wasn't for—for him being lost," he told himself, as he limped back into the tower, "I wouldn't be so bad off. There's nobody lives here, that's sure. Maybe fishermen come here, but nobody'll come today, I'll bet."

After all, luck had not been unqualifiedly against him, he thought. Here he was in an isolated spot in the wide river. What was the purpose of this little tower on its pile of rocks he could not imagine, but it was fast going to ruin and save for the rotting fishing seine there was no sign of human occupancy.

If only Archer were there it would not be half bad. But the thought of his companion's loss sickened him and robbed the lonely spot of such aspect of security as it might otherwise have had for him. Still, he must go on, he must reach the boys in France, and fight for Archer too, now—Archer, whom his own blundering had consigned to death in these treacherous waters....

He looked out again through the doorway at the dull sky, and the rain falling steadily upon the sullen water. It was a day to chill one's spirit and sap one's courage. The whole world looked gray and cheerless. Again, as on the night before, he heard the rattle of a train in the distance. High up through the drenched murky air, a bird sped across the river, and somehow its disappearance among the hills left Tom with a sinking feeling of utter desolation. In Temple Camp, on a day like this, they would be in Roy Blakeley's tent, telling stories....

"Anyway, it's better to be alone than in some German's house," he tried to cheer himself. "We—I—kept away from 'em so far, anyway——"

He stopped, holding his breath, with every muscle tense, and his heart sank within him. For out of that inner doorway came a sound—a sound unmistakably human—tragically human, it seemed now, shattering his returning courage and leaving him hopeless.

It was the sound of some one coughing!



CHAPTER XXI

COMPANY

Ordinarily Tom Slade would have stopped to think and would have kept his nerve and acted cautiously; but he had not sufficiently recovered his poise to meet this emergency wisely. He knew he could not swim away, that capture was now inevitable, and instead of pausing to collect himself he gave way to an impulse which he had never yielded to before, an impulse born of his shaken nerves and stricken hope and the sort of recklessness which comes from despair. What did it matter? Fate was against him....

With a kind of defiant abandonment he limped to the little stone doorway and stood there like an apparition, clutching the sides with trembling hands. But whatever reckless words of surrender he meant to offer froze upon his lips, and he swayed in the opening, staring like a madman.

For reclining upon a rough bunk, with knees drawn up, was Archibald Archer, busily engaged in whittling a stick, his freckled nose wrinkling up in a kind of grotesque accompaniment to each movement of his hand against the hard wood.

"I—I thought——" Tom began.

"Well,—I'll—be——" countered Archer.

For a moment they stared at each other in blank amaze. Then a smile crept over Tom's face, a smile quite as unusual with him as his sudden spirit of surrender had been; a smile of childish happiness. He almost broke out laughing from the reaction.

"Are you carvin' a souvenir?" he said foolishly.

"No, I ain't carrvin' no souveneerr," Archer answered. "Therre's fish among those rocks and I'm goin' to spearr 'em."

"You ain't carvin' a what!" said Tom.

"I ain't carrvin' a souveneerr," Archer said with the familiar Catskill Mountain roll to his R's.

"I just wanted to hear you say it," said Tom, limping over to him and for the first time in his life yielding to the weakness of showing sentiment.

"All night long," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bunk, "I was thinkin' how you said it—and it sounds kind of good——"

"How'd you make out in the riverr?" Archer asked.

"You can't even say river," said Tom, laughing foolishly in his great relief.

"It was some storrm, all right! But I got the matches safe anyway, and they'll strike, 'cause I tried one."

"You ought to have made a whisk stick[A] to try it," said Tom, then caught himself up suddenly. "But I ain't going to tell you what you ought to do any more. I'm goin' to stop bossin'."

[Footnote A: A stick the end of which is separated into fine shavings which readily catch the smallest flame, a familiar device used by scouts.]

"I got yourr spy-glass forr you," said Archer. "I had to dive f'rr't. Didn't you hearr me call to you it was lost and I was goin' down f'rr't?"

"——lost——down——"

The tragic words flitted again through Tom's mind, and he reached out and took Archer's hand hesitatingly as if ashamed of the feeling it implied.

"What'd you do that for? You were a fool," he said.

"What you got to do, you do," said Archer; "that's what you'rre always sayin'. Didn't you say you wanted it so's you could see that fellerr Blondel's house from the mountains? Therre it is," he said, nodding toward an old ring-net that stood near, "and it's some souveneerr too, 'cause it's been at the bottom of the old Rhine."

Tom looked at the spy-glass which Archer had thrown into the net and the net seemed all hazy and tangled for his eyes were brimming. He would not spare himself now.

"I see I'm the fool," he stammered; "I thought I shouldn't have started across because maybe you couldn't swim so good and didn't want to admit it."

"Me? I dived in Black Lake before you werre borrn," said Archer. This was not quite true, since he was two years younger than Tom, but Tom only smiled at him through glistening eyes.

"I see now I was crazy to think about finding her—anyway——"

"You haven't forrgot how she treated us, have you?" Archer retorted, quoting Tom's own words. "It came to me all of a sudden, when I dropped the glove, and that's when I called to you. And all of a sudden I thought how you walked back toward the house with herr that night and—and—do you think I don't understand—you darrned big chump?"



CHAPTER XXII

BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS

"Do you know what I think?" said Archer. "If Alsace used to belong to France, then the Rhine must have been the boundary between France and Gerrmany and we'rre right on that old frontierr now—hey? I'm a smarrt lad, huh? They used to have watch towers and things 'cause I got kept in school once forr sayin' a poem wrong about a fellerr that was in a watch towerr on the Rhine. I bet this towerr had something to do with that old frontierr and I bet it was connected with that castle overr on shorre, too. Therre was a picture of a fellerr in a kind of an arrmorr looking off the top of a towerr just like this—I remember 'cause I marrked him up with a pencil so's he'd have a swallerr-tailed coat and a sunbonnet."

Archer's education was certainly helping him greatly.

"If we could once get overr therre into that Black Forest," he continued, scanning the Baden shore and the heights beyond with the rescued glass, "we'd be on easy street 'cause I remember gettin' licked forr sayin', 'the abrupt west slopes of this romantic region are something or otherr with wild vineyards that grow in furious thing-um-bobs——'"

"What?" said Tom.

"Anyway, there's lots of grapes there," Archer concluded.

"If that's the way you said it I don't blame 'em for lickin' you," said sober Tom. "I think by tonight I'll be able to swim it. There seems to be some houses over there—that's one thing I don't like."

The Baden side, as well as they could make out through the haze, was pretty thickly populated for a mile or two, but the lonesome mountains arose beyond and once there, they would be safe, they felt sure.

They spent the day in the dilapidated frontier tower, as Archer called it, and he was probably not far from right in his guess about it. Certainly it had not been used for many years except apparently by fishermen occasionally, and the rotten condition of the seines showed that even such visitors had long since ceased to use it. Perhaps indeed it was a sort of outpost watch tower belonging to the gray castle which they saw through the mist.

"Maybe it belonged to a Gerrman baron," suggested Tom.

"Anyway, it's a barren island," said Archer; "are you hungry?"

Tom sat in the doorway, favoring his hurt knee, and watched Archer move cautiously about among the sharp, slippery rocks, where he succeeded in cornering and spearing several bewildered fish which the troubled waters of the night had marooned in these small recesses.

"I'm afraid, you'll be seen from the shore," Tom said, but without that note of assurance and authority which he had been accustomed to use.

"Don't worry," said Archer, "it's too thick and hazy. Just wait till I spearr one morre. Therre's a beaut, now——"

They wasted half a dozen damp matches before they could get flame enough to ignite the whisk stick which Tom held ready, but when they succeeded they "commandeered" the broken door as a "warr measurre," to quote Archer, and kindled a fire just inside the doorway where they believed that the smoke, mingling with the mist, would not be seen through the gray, murky atmosphere.

It is a great mistake to be prejudiced against a fish just because it is German. Tom and Archer were quite free from that narrow bias. And if it should ever be your lot to be marooned in a ramshackle old watch tower on the Rhine on a dull, rainy day, remember that the same storm which has marooned you will have marooned some fishes among the crevices of rock—only you must be careful to turn them often and not let them burn. The broken rail of an old spiral stairway, if there happens to be one handy, can be twisted into a rough gridiron, and if you happen to think of it (as Tom did) you can use the battery case of your flashlight for a drinking-cup.

"If we couldn't have managed to get a light with these damp matches," he said, as they partook of their sumptuous breakfast, "we'd have just had to wait till the sun came out and we could a' got one with the lens in the spy-glass."

Once a scout, always a scout!



CHAPTER XXIII

THE CATSKILL VOLCANO IN ERUPTION

All day long the dull, drizzling rain continued, and as the hours passed their hope revived and their courage strengthened.

"Therre's one thing I'm glad of," said Archer, "and that's that I thought about putting that Gerrman soldierr's paperrs in the glove. I've got a hunch I'd like to know what that letterr says."

"I'm glad you did," said Tom. "I got to admit I didn't think of it."

By evening Tom's knee was much better though still sore, and his head pained not at all. They had but one thought now—to swim to shore and get into the mountains where they believed they could continue their course southward. Swimming to the nearest point on the east, or Baden bank, would, they could see by the glass, bring them into a fairly thickly populated district and how to get past this and into the protecting highlands troubled them. They had thus far avoided civilization and towns, where they knew the ever-watchful eye of Prussian authority was to be feared. They knew well enough that their wet garments constituted no disguise; but they could, at least, get to shore and see how the land lay.

They were greatly elated at their success so far, and at their providential reunion. Whatever difficulties they had encountered they had surmounted, and whatever difficulties lay ahead they would meet and overcome, they felt sure.

As the day wore away, the rain ceased, but the sky remained dull and murky. Their plan was to wait for the darkness and they were talking over their good luck and what they thought the rosy outlook when Tom, looking toward the Alsatian shore with the glass, saw a small boat which was scarcely distinguishable in the hazy twilight.

"I don't believe it's coming this way," he said confidently, handing the glass to Archer. But at the same time he was conscious of a sinking sensation.

"Yes, it is," said Archer; "it's coming right for us."

"Maybe they're just rowing across," said Tom.

Archer watched the boat intently. "It's coming herre all right," he said; "we'rre pinched. Let's get inside, anyway."

Tom smiled with a kind of sickly resignation. "Let's see," he said; "yes, you're right, they've got uniforms, too. It's all up. We might have had sense enough to know. I bet they traced us all the way through Alsace. There's no use trying to beat that crowd," he added in cynical despair.

Hope dashed when it is just reviving brings the most hopeless of all despair, and with Tom, whose nerves had been so shaken, their imminent capture seemed now like a kind of mockery.

"When I found you were all right," he said to Archer in his dull way, "and we were all alone here, I might have known it was too good to be true. I wouldn't bother now. I just got bad luck.—When I tried for the pathfinders' badge and tracked somebody that stole something," he added with his stolid disregard for detail, "I found it was my own father, and I didn't claim the badge. That's the kind of luck I got. So I wouldn't try any more. 'Cause if you got bad luck you can't help it. I dropped my knife and the blade stuck in the ground—up at Temple Camp—and that's bad luck. Let 'em come——"



This side of Tom Slade was new to Archer, and he stared curiously at the lowering face of his companion.

"That's what you call losing your morale," he said; "if you lose that—go-od night! Suppose General Joffre said that when the Huns werre hitting it forr Paris! S'pose I said that when my foot stuck in the mud on the bottom of this plaguey riverr!"

"I didn't know that," said Tom.

"Well, you know it now," retorted Archer, "and I don't give up till they land me back in prison, and I don't give up then, eitherr. And I ain't lettin' any jack-knives get my goat—so you can chalk that up in yerr little old noddle!"

"I guess that's the trouble," Tom began; "my head aches——"

"Can you swim now?" Archer demanded.

"You go," said Tom; "my knee's too stiff."

"If you everr say a thing like that to me again," said Archer, his eyes snapping and his freckled face flushing scarlet, "I'll——"

"I didn't think we'd start till midnight," Tom said, "and I thought my knee'd be well enough by that time."

The little boat, as they could see from the doorway, bobbed nearer and nearer and Archer could see that it contained two men.

"They've got on uniforms," Archer said, "but I can't see what they arre. Let's keep inside."

"They know we're here," said Tom; "they'd only shoot us if we started away."

Closer and closer came the little boat until one of its occupants jumped out, hauling it into one of the little rocky caverns of the islet. Then both came striding up to the doorway.

As soon as they caught sight of the boys they paused aghast and seemed to be much more discomfited than either Tom or Archer. Evidently they had not come for the fugitives and the thought occurred to Archer that they might be fugitives themselves.

"Vell, vat you do here, huh?" one asked.

Archer was managing this affair and he managed it in his own sweet way.

"We're herre because we're herre," he said, in a perfect riot of rolling R's.

"You German—no?"

"No, thank goodness! We'rre not," Archer said recklessly. "Are we pinched?"

"How you come here?" the German demanded in that tone of arrogant severity which seems to imply, "I give you and the whole of the rest of the world two seconds to answer."

Tom, whose spirits revived at this rather puzzling turn of affairs, watched the two soldiers keenly and noticed that neither had sword or firearms. And he realized with chagrin that in those few moments of "lost morale," he had been strangely unworthy of himself and of his scout training. And feeling so he let Archer do the talking.

"We're Americans."

"Americans, ach! From prison you escape, huh?" the younger soldier snapped. "You haff a peekneek here, huh?" And turning to his companion he poured a kind of guttural volley at him, which his comrade answered with a brisk return of heavy verbal fire. Archer, listening intently and using his very rudimentary knowledge of German, gathered that whoever and whatever these two were, they were themselves in the perilous business of escaping.

"They'rre in the same box as we are," he said to Tom. "Don't worry."

It did not occur to the boys then, though they often thought of it afterward, when their acquaintance with the strange race of Huns had been improved, that these two soldiers manifested not the slightest interest in the experiences which the boys had gone through. Almost immediately and without condescending to any discourse with them, the two men fell to discussing how they might use them, just as their masters had used Belgium and would use Switzerland and Holland if it fell in with their purpose.

After the generous interest that Frenchy and his people had shown and the lively curiosity about his adventures which British Tommies in the prison camp had displayed, Tom was unable to understand this arrogant disregard. Even a greasy, shifty-eyed Serbian in the prison had asked him about America and "how it felt" to be torpedoed.

It was not just that the two soldiers regarded the boys as enemies, either. They simply were not German and therefore nothing that they did or said counted or was worth talking about.

At last the one who seemed to be the spokesman said, "Ve make a treaty, huh?"

It was more of an announcement than a question, and Archer looked at Tom and laughed.

"A treaty!" said he. "Good night! Do you mean a scrap o' paperr?"

"Ve let you off," said the German in a tone of severe condescension. "Ve gif you good clothes—here," he added, seeming unable to get away from his manner of command. "Ve go feeshing. Ve say nutting—ve let you go. You escape—ach, vat iss dis?" he added deprecatingly. "Ve say nutting."

"And we don't say anything eitherr, is that it?" said Archer.

"Eef you talk you can't escape, what? Vy shall you talk, huh?"

Tom looked at Archer, who screwed up his freckled nose and gazed shrewdly at the Germans with a sagacious and highly satisfied look in his mischievous eye.

"That's the treaty, is it?" he said. "And that's just the kind of—shut up!" he interpolated, glancing sideways at Tom. "I'll do the talking—that's just the kind of stuff you'rre trying to put overr on President Wilson, too—tryin' to make the otherr fellerr think he's licked and then making believe you'rre willing to be generous. You got the nerrve (the R's fairly rolled and rumbled as he gathered momentum)—you got the nerrve to come herre with out any guns or sworrds and things and think you can scarre us. Do you know—shut up!" he shot at Tom by way of precaution. "Do you know wherre I think yourr sworrds and things arre? I think the English Tommies have got 'em. I know all about you fellerrs deserrting—I hearrd about it in prison. You'rre deserrting every day. Some of you arre even surrenderrin' to get a good squarre meal. And do you know what an English Tommy told me—you consarrned blufferr, you——"

He was in full swing now, his freckled nose all screwed up and rolling out his R's like artillery. Even sober Tom couldn't help smiling at the good old upstate adjective, consarrned.

"He told me a Hun is no good when he loses his gun or his sworrd. You don't think I'm a-scarred of you, do you? It's fifty-fifty—two against two, you pair of bloomin' kidnapperrs, and you won't tell 'cause you can't afford to! Same reason as we won't. But you can't put one overr on me any morre'n you can on President Wilson and if you'rre forr making treaties you got to get down off your high horrse—see? You ain't got a superiorrity of numbers now! You got nothing but fourr fists, same as we got. Forr two cents, I'd wash yourr face on those rocks! Treaties! I come from Corrnville Centre, I do, and——"

Tom laughed outright.

"You shut up!" said Archer. "You want to make a treaty, huh? All right, that'll be two Huns less forr the Allies to feed. We'll swap with you, all right, and I wish you luck. I don't know wherre you'rre going or what you'rre going to do and I don't carre a rotten apple. Only you ain't going to dictate terrms to me. You'll take these crazy old rags and you'rre welcome to 'em, and we'll take yourr uniforms if that's what you want. Treaty! We'll make a treaty with you! And we'll take the boat too, and if that don't satisfy you then that's the end of the what-d'-you-call it! You keep still!" he added, turning to Tom.



CHAPTER XXIV

MILITARY ETIQUETTE

"What did you mean by the what-d'-you call it?" Tom asked, as they rowed through the darkness for the Baden shore.

"Arrmis-stice," said Archer, wrestling with the word.

"Oh," said Tom.

"That's the way to handle 'em," Archer said with undisguised satisfaction.

"I never saw you like that before," said Tom. "I had to laugh when you said consarn."

"That's the Huns all overr," said Archer, his vehemence not yet altogether abated. "They'll try to do the bossing even afterr they'rre licked. Treaties! They've got theirr firrst taste of a Yankee treaty, hey? Didn't even have a sworrd and wanted me to think they werre doin' us a favorr! President Wilson knows how to handle that bunch, all right, all right!—Don't row if you'rre tirred."

"It don't hurt my leg to row, only I see now I couldn't swim it."

"Think I didn't know that?" said Archer.

"I got to admit you did fine," said Tom.

"You got to get 'em down on theirr knees beforre you make a treaty with 'em," boasted Archer. "You can see yourself they'rre no good when they haven't got any commanderr—or any arrms. When Uncle Sam makes a treaty with that gang, crab-apples, but I hope he gets the boat, too."

"I know what you mean," said Tom soberly. "I have to laugh at the way you talk when you get mad. It reminds me of the country and Temple Camp."

"That's one thing I learned from knockin' around in Europe since this warr starrted," said Archer. "The botches, or whatever you call 'em, are no darrned good when you get 'em alone. The officers may be all right, but the soldierrs are thick. If I couldn't 'a' knocked the bluff out o' that lord-high critturr, I'd 'a' rubbed his pie face in the mud!"

Tom laughed at his homely expletives and Archer broke out laughing too, at his own expense. But for all that, Tom was destined to recall, and that very soon, what Archer had said about the Huns. And he was shortly to use this knowledge in one of the most hazardous experiences of his life.

They were now, thanks to their treaty, both dry clad in the field-gray uniforms of the German rank and file; and though they felt somewhat strange in these habiliments they enjoyed a feeling of security, especially in view of the populated district they must pass through.

Of the purposes and fate of their late "enemies" they had no inkling and they did not greatly concern themselves about this pair of fugitives who had crossed their path. They knew, from the gossip in "Slops" prison, that Germany was full of deserters who were continually being rounded up because, as Archer blithely put it, they were "punk scouts and had no resourrce—or whatever you call it." Tom did not altogether relish the implication that a deserter might be a good scout or vice versa, but he agreed with Archer that the pair they had encountered would probably not "get away with it."

"If they had a couple o' generrals to map it out forr 'em, maybe they would," said Archer.

"I think I'm above you in rank," said Tom, glancing at an arrow sewn on his sleeve.

"I'm hanged if I know what that means," Archer answered. "Therre's a couple morre of 'em on your collarr. Maybe you'rre a generral, hey? I'm just a plain, everyday botch."

"Boche," said Tom.

"Same thing."

They landed at an embankment where a railroad skirted the shore and it occurred to Tom now that the guiding light which had forsaken him the night before was a railroad signal which had been turned the other way after the passage of the train he had heard. At his suggestion, Archer bored a hole in the boat and together they gave it a smart push out into the river.

"Davy Jones forr you, you bloomin' tattletile, as the Tommies would say," Archer observed in reminiscence of his vast and varied acquaintanceship. "Come on now, we've got to join our regiment and blow up a few hospitals. How do you like being a botch, anyway?"

"I'd rather be one now than a year from now," said Tom.

"Thou neverr spakst a truerr worrd.

"Oh, Fritzie Hun, he had a gun, And other things that's worrse; He didn't like the foe to strike, So he shot a Red Cross nurrse,"

Archer rattled on.

"Can't you say nurse?" said Tom.

"Surre I can—nurrrrse."

Tom laughed.

They tramped up through the main street of a village, for the populated area was too extensive to afford hope of a reasonably short detour. The few people whom they passed in the darkness paid no particular heed to them. They might have been a couple of khaki-clad boys in America for all the curiosity they excited.

At the railroad station an army officer glared at them when they saluted and seemed on the point of accosting them, which gave them a momentary scare.

"We'd better be careful," said Tom.

"Gee, I thought we had to salute," Archer answered.

They followed the railroad tracks through an open sparsely populated region as far as the small town of Ottersweier. The few persons who were abroad paid no particular attention to them, and as long as no one spoke to them they felt safe, for the street was in almost total darkness. Once a formidable-looking German policeman scrutinized them, or so they thought, and a group of soldiers who were sitting in the dark entrance of a little beer garden looked at them curiously before saluting. Most of these men were crippled, and indeed as they passed along it seemed to the fugitives that nearly every man they passed either had his arm in a sling or was using crutches.

"Do you think maybe they had a hunch we werren't Gerrman soldierrs at all?" Archer queried.

"No," said Tom. "I think they just didn't want to salute us till they were sure we were soldiers like themselves. I think a soldier hasn't got a right even to salute an officer here unless the officer takes some notice of him. Maybe the officer's got to glance at him first, or something."

"G-o-od night!" said Archer. "Reminds you of America, don't it—not 'arf, as the Tommies say. Wouldn't it seem funny not daring to speak to an officerr therre? Many's the chat I've had with French generals and English ones, too. Didn't I give old Marshal What's-his-name an elastic band to put around his paperrs?"

In all probability he had, for he was an aggressive and brazen youngster without much respect for dignity and authority, and Tom was glad when they reached the hills, for he had been apprehensive lest his comrade might essay a familiar pleasantry with some grim official or launch himself into the perilous pastime of swapping souvenirs with a German soldier.

But they were both to remember this business about saluting which, if Tom was right, was eloquent of the German military system, showing how high was the officer and how low the soldier who might not even pay his arrogant superior the tribute of a salute without permission.

This knowledge was to serve Tom in good stead before many days should pass.



CHAPTER XXV

TOM IN WONDERLAND

All through that night, with their compass as a guide, they climbed the hills, keeping in a southerly direction, but verging slightly eastward. In the morning they found themselves on the edge of a high, deeply wooded plateau, which they knew extended with more or less uniformity to the Swiss frontier.

Looking ahead of them, in a southerly direction, they could see dim, solemn aisles of sombre fir trees and the ground was like a brown velvet carpet, yielding gently under their feet. The air was laden with a pungent odor, accentuated by the recent storm, and the damp, resiny fragrance was like a bracing tonic to the fugitives, bidding them welcome to these silent, unfrequented depths.

They were now, indeed, within the precincts of the renowned Schwarzwald, whose wilderness toyland sends forth out of its sequestered hamlets (or did) wooden lions, tigers and rhinoceroses for the whole world, and monkeys on sticks and jumping-jacks and little wooden villages, like the little wooden villages where they are made.

The west slopes of this romantic region were abrupt, almost like the Palisades of the Hudson, running close to the river in some places, and in other places descending several miles back from the shore, so that a panoramic view of southern Alsace was always obtainable from the sharp edge of this forest workshop of Santa Claus. In the east the plateau slopes away and peters out in the lowlands, so that, as one might say, the Black Forest forms a kind of huge natural springboard to afford one a good running jump across the Rhine into Alsace.

Archer's battered and misused geography had not lied about the commissary department of this storied wilderness, for the wild grapes (of which the famous Rhenish wine is made) did indeed grow in "furious what-d'you-call-'ems" or luxurious profusion if you prefer, upon the precipitous western slopes.

All that day they tramped southward, meeting not a soul, and feeling almost as if they were in a church. It seemed altogether grotesque that Germany, grim, fighting, war-crazy Germany, should own such a peaceful region as this.

In the course of the day, they helped the prohibition movement, as Archer said, by eating grapes in such quantities as seriously to reduce the output of Rhenish wine. "But, oh, Ebeneezerr!" he added. "What wouldn't I give for a good russet apple and a dipper of sweet cider."

"You're always thinking about apples and souvenirs," said Tom.

"You can bet I'm going to get a souveneerr in herre, all right!" Archer announced. "Therre ought to be lots of good ones herre, hey?"

"Maybe they grow in furious what-d'you-call-'ems?" suggested sober Tom.

"If it keeps as level as this, we ought to be able to waltz into the barrbed wirre by tomorrow night. This is the only thing about Gerrmany that's on the level, hey?"

Toward evening they had the lesser of the two surprises which were in store for them in the Black Forest. They were hiking along when suddenly Tom paused and listened intently.

"What is it?" Archer asked.

"A bird," said Tom, "but I never heard a bird make a noise like that before."

"He's chirrping in Gerrman," suggested Archer.

The more Tom listened, the more puzzled he became, for he had the scout's familiarity with bird voices and this was a new one to him.

"Therre's a house," Archer said.

And sure enough there, nestling among the firs some distance ahead, was the quaintest little house the boys had ever seen. It was almost like a toy house with a picturesque roof ten sizes too big for it, and a funny little man in a smock sitting in the doorway. Hanging outside was a large cuckoo clock and it was the wooden cuckoo which Tom had heard.

Shavings littered the ground about this tiny, wilderness manufactory, and upon a rough board, like a scout messboard, were a number of little handmade windmills revolving furiously. Wooden soldiers and stolid-looking horses with conventional tails, all fresh from the deft and cunning hands which wielded the harmless jack-knife, were piled helter-skelter in a big basket waiting, waiting, waiting, for the end of the war, to go forth in peace and goodwill to the ends of the earth and nestle snugly in the bottom of Christmas stockings.

This quaint old man could speak scarcely any English, but when the boys made out that he was Swiss, and apparently kindly disposed, they sprawled on the ground and rested, succeeding by dint of motions and a few words of German in establishing a kind of intercourse with him. He was apparently as far removed from the war as if he had lived in the Fiji Islands, and the fugitives felt quite as safe at his rustic abode as if they had been on the planet Mars. His nationality, too, gave them the cheering assurance that they were approaching the frontier.

"Vagons—noh," he said; "no mohr." Then he pointed to his brimming basket and said more which they could not understand.

Like most persons who live in the forest, he seemed neither surprised at their coming nor curious. They gathered that in former days wagons had wound through these forest ways gathering the handiwork of the people, but that they came no more. To Tom it seemed a pathetic thing that Kaiser Bill should reach out his bloody hand and blight the peaceful occupation of this quaint little old man of the forest. Perhaps he would die, far away there in his tree-embowered cottage, before the wagons ever came again, and the overflowing basket would rot away and the windmills blow themselves to pieces....



CHAPTER XXVI

MAGIC

Leaving the home of the Swiss toymaker, who had shared his simple fare with them, they started southward through the deep wilderness.

Tom's idea was to keep well within the forest, but within access to its western edge, so that they might scan the country across the river at intervals. They were so refreshed and encouraged as they tramped through the deep, unpeopled wilderness which they knew must bring them to the border, and so eager to bring their long journey to an end, that they kept on for a while in the darkness until, to their great surprise, they came upon a sheet of water the bank of which extended as far east and west as they could see. Tom fancied he could just distinguish the dark trees outlined on the opposite shore.

"Let's follow the shore a ways and see if we can get round it," he said.

But a tramp along the edge, first east, then west, brought no general turn in the shore-line and they began to wonder if the Schwarzwald could be bisected by some majestic river.

"I don't think a river so high up would be so wide," Tom said. "If I was sure about that being the other shore over there, we could swim across."

"It would be betterr to get around if we could," said Archer, "because if we'rre goin' wherre people arre we don't want our uniforms all soaked."

"I'm not going to try to find her, if that's what you mean," said Tom; "not unless you say so too, anyway."

"What d'you s'pose I dived forr that glass forr?" Archer retorted. "We're goin' to find that girrl—or perish in the attempt—like old What's-his-name. You've got the right idea, Slady."

"It ain't an idea," said Tom soberly, "and if you think it's—kind of—that I—that I—like her——"

"Surre it ain't, it's 'cause you hate herr," said Archer readily.

"You make me tired," said Tom, flushing.

Since they had to sleep somewhere, they decided to bivouac on the shore of this water and take their bearings in the morning. As the night was warm, they took off their coats and hanging them to a spreading branch above them they sprawled upon the cushiony ground, abandoning for once their rule of continuous watch, and were soon fast asleep. You do not need any sleeping powders in the Black Forest, for the soft magic of its resiny air will lull you to repose.

When they awakened in the morning they squirmed with complicated gymnastic yawns, and lay gazing in lazy half slumber into the branches above them. Suddenly Archer jumped to his feet.

"Wherre arre ourr coats?" he cried.

Tom sat up, rubbed his eyes and gazed about. There were no coats to be seen.

"What d'you know about that?" said Archer. "Maybe they blew away," he added, looking about.

"There hasn't been any wind," said Tom. "Look at that handkerchief." Near him lay a handkerchief which Archer remembered spreading on the ground beside him the night before.

"Well—I'll—be—jiggered," he exclaimed, looking about again in dismay. "Somebody's been herre," he added conclusively.

Tom fell to scrutinizing the ground for footprints, but there was no sign of any and he too gazed about him in bewilderment.

"They didn't walk away, that's sure," he said, "and they didn't blow away either. There wasn't even a breeze."

A thorough search of the immediate locality confirmed their feeling of certainty that the coats had not blown away. Indeed, they could not have blown far even if there had been any wind, for the closeness of the trees to one another would have prevented this. Tom gazed about, then looked at his companion, utterly dumfounded.

"Maybe they blew into the waterr," Archer suggested. But Tom only shook his head and pointed to the light handkerchief upon the ground. A mere breath would have carried that away.

They could only stand and stare at each other. Some one had evidently taken their coats away in the night.

"It's Gerrman efficiency, that's what it is," said Archer.

"Why didn't they take us, too?" Tom asked.

"They'll be along forr us pretty soon," Archer reassured him. "They'rre superrmen—that's what they arre.—Maybe it's some kind of strategy, hey? They can do spooky things, those Huns. They've got magic uniforms."

"I don't see any reason for it," said sober Tom, still looking about, unable to conquer his amazement.

"That's just it," said Archer. "They do things therre ain't any reason forr just to practice theirr efficiency. Pretty soon you'll see all the allied soldierrs'll be losing their coats. Go-o-o-o-d night!"

"Well, I can't find any footprints, that's sure," said Tom, rather chagrined. "I usually can."

"Maybe it was some sort of an airship," Archer suggested.

Whatever the explanation of this extraordinary thing, the coats were gone. There were no footprints, and there had been no wind. And the mysterious affair left the boys aghast.

"One thing sure—we'd better get away from here quick," said Tom.

"You said it! Ebeneezerr, but this place has got the Catskills and old Rip Van Winkle beat! Come on—quick!"

Tom was not sure that one side of the water was any safer than the other in this emergency, and he was almost too nonplussed to do anything, but surely they were in danger, he felt, and would better be upon their way without the loss of a minute. What troubled him not a little also was that the precious spy-glass and the compass were with the missing coats.

They could see now that the water was a long, narrow lake the ends of which were just discernible from the midway position along the shore where they stood, and the opposite shore was perhaps a mile distant.

"Are you game to swim it?" Archer asked.

They felt that this would be easier than the long tramp around and that they would have the advantage while swimming of an extended view and would avoid any danger which might lurk behind the trees.

They had almost reached the opposite shore when Archer sputtered and called out to Tom: "Look, look!"

Tom looked and saw, hanging from a branch on the shore they were nearing, the two missing field gray uniform coats.

This was too much. Speechless with amazement they clambered ashore and walked half fearfully up to their fugitive garments. There was no doubt about it, there were the two coats dangling from a low hanging branch, perfectly dry and in the pockets the spy-glass and the trusty compass. The two boys stared blankly at each other.

"Well—what—do—you—know—about—that?" said Archer.

"They didn't steal anything, anyway," said Tom, half under his breath.

Archer stared at the coats, then peered cautiously about among the trees. Then he faced Tom again, who returned his stare in mute astonishment.

"You don't s'pose we could have swum across in ourr sleep, do you?" said Archer.

Tom shook his head thoughtfully. Could it be that those Huns, those fiends of the air and the ocean depths, those demons who could shoot a gun for seventy miles and rear their yellow heads suddenly up out of the green waters close to the American shore—could it be that they were indeed genii—ghouls of evil, who played fast and loose with poor wanderers in the forest until the moment came for crushing them utterly?

Or could it be that this black wilderness, perched upon its mountain chain, was indeed the magic toyland of all creation, the home of Santa Claus and——

"Come on," said Archer, "let's not stand herre. B'lieve me, I want to get as far away from this place as we can!"



CHAPTER XXVII

NONNENMATTWEIHER

But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which ran from the shore.

"I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom.

"Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.

In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in the doorway.

"Well—I'll—be——" began Archer.

Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?

"This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer. "Either we'rre crazy or this place is."

Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compass. Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable amazement.

"Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer, roused out of his wonted stolidness.