“Same here,” added Giraffe; “but I haven’t quite told you all yet.”
“What, is there another chapter to the story?” asked Bumpus, getting ready for a second edition of those thrills.
“I watched them come away from the barn,” continued Giraffe; “though of course they didn’t know anybody was around. They walked along the road a bit, and I saw them stop to speak to another man. And, Thad, he was a soldier!”
“Is that a fact?” remarked the other, deeply interested of course.
“He wore the uniform of an officer, I want you to understand!” Giraffe added; “and that’s the main reason why I think they mean to steal the car for the use of the Government. Perhaps they haven’t just got to the point here of taking anything they see in sight, like the Germans are doing, we were told.”
“There’s the call to supper,” said Bumpus, struggling to his feet with considerable difficulty. “What’s the last word about this business, Thad?”
“Just this,” he was told, “we’re going to try and protect that car to-night, if we have to camp out there in the hay and guard it.”
“Second the motion!” said Giraffe, with all the vim he was capable of showing, for he dearly loved excitement and action.
“Now, don’t say another word about it while we’re eating,” warned Thad. “There may be people at the table or nearby who could understand English. We’ll talk of other things we’ve met with in the past. There are heaps of incidents that might be worth while bringing up again, you know.”
“I should say there were,” admitted Giraffe; “fellows who have hit the trail down in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina; tramped and camped up in the pine woods of Maine; had a summer cruise through the Lake Superior region; spent a time down in the swamps of the Sunny South; and even hunted big game away out among the Rocky Mountains, shouldn’t find it hard to rake up things to talk about, it strikes me.”