Tom forgot all about the good old scout rule to do a good turn every day and camouflaged his manners by doing a bad turn every minute—or as nearly that as possible. It was good camouflage, and got them safely through the streets of Norne, where they must do considerable hunting to find the home of old Melotte's friend Blondel. They finally located it on the outskirts of the town and recognized it by the billet flag which Melotte had described to them.
CHAPTER XXX
THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE
It was the success of their policy of boldness, together with something which Madame Blondel told him, which prompted Tom to undertake the impudent and daring enterprise which was later to make him famous on the western front.
Blondel himself, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, had been pressed into military service, but Madame Blondel remained in the little house on the edge of the town in calm disregard of the German officers who had turned her little home into a headquarters while the new road was being made. For this, of course, was being done under the grim eye of the Military.
The havoc wrought by these little despots, minions of the great despot, in the simple abode of the poor old French couple, was eloquent of the whole Prussian system.
The officer whose heroic duty it was to oversee the women and girls slaving with pick and shovel had turned the little abode out of windows, to make it comfortable for himself and his guests, treating the furniture and all the little household gods with the same disdainful brutality that his masters had shown for Louvain Cathedral. The German instinct is always the same, whether it be on a small or a large scale—whether kicking furniture or blowing up hospitals.
Amid the ruins of her tidy little home, Madame Blondel lingered in undaunted proprietorship—the very spirit of gallant, indomitable France!