For this act Armand might have been shot, but, being young and agile and the German soldiers being fat and clumsy, he effected a flank move and disappeared before they could lay hands on him and it was many a long day before ever his parents heard from him again.
At last there came a letter from far-off America, telling of his flight across the mountains into France and of his working his passage to the United States. How this letter got through the Prussian censorship against all French Alsatians, it would be hard to say. But it was the first and last word from him that had ever reached the blighted home.
After a while the storm cloud of the great war burst and then the prospect of hearing from Armand became more hopeless as the British navy threw its mighty arm across the ocean highway. And old Pierre, because he was a French veteran, was watched more suspiciously than ever.
Florette was nearly twenty now, and Armand must be twenty-three or four, and they were talking of him on this quiet, balmy night, as they sat together in the arbor. They spoke in low tones, for to talk in French was dangerous, they were already under the cloud of suspicion, and the very trees in the neighborhood of a Frenchman's home seemed to have ears....
CHAPTER II
AN APPARITION
"But how could we hear from him now, Florette, any better than before?" the old man asked.
"America is our friend now," the girl answered, "and so good things must happen."