“Well, after all it turned out to be a false alarm,” ventured Hanky Panky, giving an exhibition of one of his fancy yawns; and really no boy could excel him when it came to stretching his mouth wide open, so Josh always declared.
“But it might have been serious, all right,” asserted the latter. “Our luck only caused them to be French instead of German. It was what you might call a narrow squeak, Hanky Panky; and only for my waking up when I did we’d have lost our property anyway.”
“We owe you our best thanks for your wakefulness, Josh,” Rod told him.
“Oh! that’s all right,” laughed the other; “thanks to a bad dream I chanced to arouse myself, and caught the flicker of some sort of moving light out there. So of course I just tumbled out and made for the window. When I saw lanterns moving this way and that I began to think we were going to be in the soup; so, knowing you ought to be put in touch with the situation, I wakened you, Rod.”
“By the way,” Hanky Panky continued, “what was the lieutenant telling you all the time he kept on talking, Rod?”
“That’s so,” echoed Josh immediately; “whatever it could have been it seemed to give him a whole lot of pleasure to be able to inform you, for he was smiling like everything, and I could see the pride sticking out of his face.”
“Oh! I was asking him for the latest news from the battle front,” replied Rod, “and what he told me was great stuff, to be sure. It seems that what we heard before was part of the truth.”
“You mean how the German General Von Kluck, swinging down to attack Paris from the northwest, didn’t get within gunshot of the outer forts before he found he had exposed his flank, and it was in danger of being turned–was that it, Rod?” and Josh, who was intensely interested in all military matters, eagerly waited to hear the answer to his leading question.
“Just what happened,” Rod explained. “You see, a new army was hastily gotten together by General Gallieni, the Governor of Paris, consisting for the most part of the regiments meant to defend the city. This, assisted by the British forces, was threatening the exposed flank of Von Kluck. If it struck hard it would throw his whole army into confusion, and start a rout. So instead of attacking the forts as he had intended, Von Kluck made a swift swing, and passed Paris on the north.”
“And what did Joffre do then?” asked Josh.