The men recently flying over her head in the French air machine must be comrades of Tom's in the secret mission which had carried that young fellow into the enemy's country. The message she had received might be only one of several the flying men had dropped about Clair, and at the request of Tom Cameron, the latter hoping that at least one of them would reach Ruth's hands.
The girl knew that American and French flying men often carried communications addressed to the German people into Germany, and dropped them in similar "bombs." One of the President's addresses had been circulated through a part of Germany and Austria by this means.
She had a feeling, too, that the man who had thrown the message to her knew her. But Ruth could not imagine who he was. She might have believed it to be Tom Cameron himself; only she knew very well that Tom had not joined the air service.
The incident, however, heartened her. Whatever Tom was doing—no matter how perilous his situation—he had thought of her. She had an idea that the message had been written within a few hours.
She went on more cheerfully toward the Dupay farm. She arrived amidst a clamor of children and fowls, to find the adult members of the family gathered in the big living-room of the farmhouse instead of occupied, as usual, about the indoor and outdoor work. For the Dupays were no sluggards.
"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth!" cried Henriette, and ran to meet her. The French girl's plump cheeks were tear-streaked and Ruth instantly saw that not only the girl but the whole family was much disturbed.
"What has happened?" the American girl asked.
In these days of war almost any imaginable thing might happen.
"It is poor old Aunt Abelard!" Henriette exclaimed in her own tongue. "She must remove from her old home at Nacon."
Ruth knew that the place was a little village (and villages can be small, indeed, in France) between Clair and the field hospital where she had herself been for a week, but on another road than that by which she had traveled.