“He is always afraid that she has gone to the hospital to see us,” declared Michelle, as Adelheid with slowing steps followed her father into the cottage. “Oh, there is something strange about it all.”
“Why, Michelle, it can’t be anything. It seems queer to us because we can’t follow it,” Lucy protested, half amused and half annoyed at her friend’s seriousness. “What could happen here? It’s so peaceful I sometimes forget we are in Germany.”
“Yes, that’s the trouble. We forget it too easily,” said Bob, as they walked back through the forest. “It’s safer in these days to keep your eyes open.”
This time Alan had no fault to find with Bob’s suspicious tone, and he echoed Michelle’s words of a moment before, “It looks queer. But I give it up. They can’t be plotting to recruit an army of pine trees.”
Larry seemed unwilling to commit himself, though he did not share at all Lucy’s impatience and apprehension. He walked along the forest aisles at her side, his eyes raised thoughtfully to the tree-tops, where the last rays of sunset still lingered, though twilight had begun to deepen between the trunks and touch with violet shadows the snowy ground. The profound stillness seemed to augur future troubles.
However, Herr Johann had no power to dampen anyone’s spirits for long. The officers were conscious enough of the upper hand now in any dealings with the Boches. Their only lingering dread was that some last trick on the enemy’s part might delay the settlement of peace and the troops’ home-coming. That indefinite alarm thrust aside, they were inclined to treat Franz’ little schemes lightly, and to be mildly amused at the prospect of discovering his secret.
“Leslie, you ought not to leave us yet,” said Larry to Alan. “You’ll miss all the fun. There’s a mystery in this forest now. I think I’ve solved it, though. Franz is the Kaiser, incognito; Herr Johann is the Kronprinz, and Wilhelm is the heir of the Hohenzollerns.”
“Some weak points there, Eaton,” said Alan, laughing. “Since when does the All-Highest treat his wayward son so politely?”
“Anyway, Adelheid couldn’t have kept it all to herself,” said Lucy, smiling. “She would have told us, just as she did about the little farm in Alsace. That must have been hard for those children, leaving their home.”
Armand flashed a quizzical glance at her. “So it was, Mademoiselle. And very hard, too, for the French when Germany wrested Alsace from France and gave the French people their choice between exile or German dominion. The woodcutter’s children must help pay the debt.”