"To the devil with you!" muttered the latter. He waved an arm, turned one glance upon the figure now standing a few feet from his machine, opened his throttle, and went bounding off and so into the air and away from the spot where he had landed.
As for Heinrich, he watched the departure for two minutes, and then, turning, walked towards the church-tower which had been his landmark. It was perhaps a minute later when a man accosted him.
"Say!" someone cried; "halt! Who goes there? Advance and give the countersign!"
"Hundred and forty-first Regiment!" came the prompt answer. "Name—John Miller—American Expeditionary Force, same as yourself, sonny. Say, did you see that aeroplane just now?" he asked, approaching the sentry.
"Yep. Must 'a been one of ours. Thought it landed on the flats yonder, but wasn't certain, and couldn't get a view from just here."
"Good-night, sonny!"
The two men stood opposite one another for just a brief moment, and then Heinrich passed on towards the American encampment which this sentry guarded.
"John Miller—eh? Oh! Just John Miller! Now I'd have sworn——" the sentry told himself as he paced to and fro—a lithe, tall, sinewy young fellow, a magnificent example of American manhood. "Gee, now! Where have I met that chap before?—and not liked him either. John Miller—why, bless us! Now, where?"
He swung his rifle to his shoulder and marched to and fro far more rapidly than the regulations warranted. His beat took him as far as the church tower in one direction, and back to the post to which barbed wire was attached, and which marked the limit of the encampment occupied by his own particular comrades. Something was agitating this fine young fellow—some fleeting memory the essence of which just escaped him. In his mind's eye he could picture the figure—the somewhat sloping shoulders, the rather bullet head, and the particular cast of countenance of this John Miller, who had just answered his challenge, had given him the correct counter-sign without faltering.