For two hours the two boys were too busy to know what went on in the tent. When the task was done the General dismissed them with strict orders that they were not to go more than thirty feet in any direction from his tent.
When the Germans had occupied that side of the valley, they had also used the hill as a temporary headquarters. Porky and Beany, like a pair of very restless and inquisitive hounds, went over the ground inch by inch. They could not help feeling that something good must be waiting for them within their screen of trees. The fighting miles away went on all day, and the time dragged for the boys until about three in the afternoon.
And then Porky found it—a tiny piece of wire sticking out of the ground under a root of the big tree under which they were sitting, feeling like a couple of prisoners themselves. They had never been on such close bounds before, and they didn’t like it.
Porky started to pull the wire, when Beany fell on him with a yell.
“A bomb!” he cried, flinging Porky on his back.
“My word! You have scared me to death anyhow,” said Porky.
Together they dug around the wire and followed it down and down until they almost gave up. At last, however, they had their reward, a square black tin box which they carried carefully to the General’s tent.
Even then the greatest care was taken in opening it, for fear of an infernal machine of some sort. It opened easily, however, and without harm and disclosed a mass of papers. So many that the German officer who had been in charge of them, fearing capture, had evidently buried them, thinking that with the turn of battle he could easily reclaim them from the earth.
Among the papers were several cypher keys, and one of them was found to fit the papers found by Beany in the oak table in the dungeon at the chateau back at headquarters.
Even the General was delighted, as a little study disclosed the most important plans of the coming campaign and a scheme for the expected drive, which now could be met point for point.