"Well, now, he must have guessed that when you said you 'reckoned,' Rob," declared Merritt, "but how comes it you talk English, my friend?"
"Oh! I'm from Hoboken," said the man, smiling in spite of the terrible pain he must have been enduring.
Rob was already busily engaged stanching the bleeding from his wounds, which seemed to be numerous, though not apt to prove fatal, if they had proper attention.
"Do you mean Hoboken, New Jersey?" he asked, in surprise.
"Sure. I have lived there for many years now, and have a large brewing interest. Krauss is my name, Philip Krauss. I went across from Munich, in Bavaria, and was on a visit to my old home when the war came about. Although I have long been an American citizen I still love my native land, and they soon found a place for me in the ranks. But now if I ever get over this I think I will have had enough of fighting, and expect to return to my wife and children in Hoboken. But what are you doing here on this terrible field? It is not the place for boys."
"We are Boy Scouts," Tubby informed him proudly. "By accident we were where we could watch the battle being fought. Then along came the Red Cross ambulances, and the nurses. They asked us to assist, and as scouts all learn something about first aid, why we thought we'd help out. I guess you're about our last case, Herr Krauss."
Meanwhile Rob and Merritt busied themselves. The way they went about temporarily relieving his suffering, as well as stopping the loss of blood, quite won the admiration of the Hoboken patriot, even as it had done in the case of numerous other wounded men whom the boys attended previously.
It chanced that once again the boys became immersed in their own affairs, which were beginning to weigh heavily on their minds.
"I was making inquiries of one of the men with the stretchers," Rob told his comrades, "and he assured me that this little place by the name of Sempst is only a matter of six miles or so from where we are right now."