Every time one of these was sighted the boys could see that the passengers were wholly soldiers. Sometimes they wore the blue coats of the French, with the beloved red trousers, which have been so dear to the hearts of the fighting men of the republic from away back to the time of Napoleon; then again the dull khaki of the British regulars predominated. They occupied first-class carriages, freight vans, cattle cars–anything sufficed so long as it allowed them to get closer to where a chance for glory awaited them.
All these things kept the boys in a constant condition of expectancy. As the morning wore away and they continued to make good headway Josh even found himself indulging in the hope that they would reach the scene of activity before many hours had elapsed.
Once, when they had halted at a wayside farmhouse to see if anything in the shape of a lunch could be secured for love or money, he even called the attention of his two mates to a faint rumbling far away in the distance.
“As sure as you live, fellows,” Josh went on to say eagerly, “that must be made by some of those monster guns the Germans are rolling along with them, meaning to batter down the forts defending Paris, just like they did the steel-domed ones up at Liege and Namur in Belgium, as we know happened.”
Rod was not quite so positive about it. They had covered many miles, because of good roads, and the few obstacles encountered, but he hardly believed they could be so close to Paris as that.
“I can see something low down ahead of us that may be clouds,” Hanky Panky now asserted.
“More’n likely that’s the smoke of the battle that’s raging over yonder,” declared the positive Josh, who always had to be wrestled with before he could be convinced that he was wrong.
“No matter which is the correct solution of the puzzle,” laughed Rod, not wishing to take sides against either of his chums, “we’re meaning to go ahead after we see if we can get some grub at this little farmhouse.”
Fortune played them a kind stroke, for the farmer’s wife, a voluble little French woman, who had a husband and three sons in the army, on learning that they were actually American boys, insisted on their settling down while she cooked them a fine dinner.
It turned out that Madame had herself spent several years in America, and even then had relatives living in the French Quarter in New York City. She asked them a multitude of questions, and was especially anxious to learn if the great republic across the sea would align itself with the Entente Allies, who were now, she insisted, engaged in fighting the battles of the whole world for freedom from military domination.