“Yes, everything is gone,” Tom would continue, looking around at the desolate picture, with some crows the only living thing in sight. “Now, let’s talk of something more cheerful.”
“About—well, Bessie, for instance?” suggested Jack, with a sly grin.
Tom had to laugh at his chum’s way of bringing the subject around to something he had evidently been thinking about lately.
“You’re still wondering whether you’ll ever run across that pretty little Gleason girl, I see,” he remarked.
“Well, I took quite an interest in her, as you happen to know,” admitted Jack candidly. “But it was partly on account of her having such a hard time of it with that guardian of hers. I didn’t like Potzfeldt’s looks for a red cent; and from certain things Bessie dropped I hang to the belief that he has some dark scheme up his sleeve, which will sooner or later involve the girl.”
“Well, of course we couldn’t do anything when on shipboard to try to take her away from him,” said Tom. “Bessie told you he was her legally appointed guardian, so far as she knew; and was moreover some sort of relative—an uncle by marriage, or a second cousin of her mother’s. I don’t remember what.”
“I can’t just explain it, Tom, but somehow I feel it in my bones that one of these fine days I’m fated to come across that pair again.”
“Well, if, as we believe, Mr. Potzfeldt was trying to get into Germany some way or other,” chuckled Tom, “that may mean you’ll meet Bessie as a prisoner of war. From all we’ve heard about the way the Germans are treating their prisoners you’re facing a dismal outlook, my boy. I prophesy that you’ll look a whole lot thinner after you’ve been fed on black bread and water for three months.”
“Say, Tom, what about Adolph Tuessig and your father’s stolen paper?” went on Jack, after a pause.
“I don’t know,” was the reply and Tom heaved a sigh. “I wish I could learn something—for dad’s sake.”