“In the first place my brother resembles my father a great deal,” spoke up Amos, with a touch of pride in his voice. “He has the soldier spirit in him; it is bred in the bone, you see. So I was not at all surprised on getting a few lines from him telling that he hoped to find a chance to enlist on the side of the Allies. He was in London at that time; and as I knew Frank’s determined ways I never doubted but what he carried his point and joined the army of Kitchener.”
“So much to his credit then,” declared the other. “If our kin beyond the water really knew what this war means for the whole English-speaking world they would give us even more of their sympathy.”
“You do not want to have us searched further then, Colonel?” asked Jack, with a gleam of amusement in his blue eyes.
The portly officer hemmed and hawed a little to hide his confusion; then he chuckled.
“Oh, I imagine there is no necessity for that,” he observed, presently. “Anyone who is carrying a paper signed like this ought to be above suspicion. You have done us all a service in securing this valuable chart. If that Taube pilot escaped, bearing such a document with him, it would be signing the death warrant for hundreds of brave boys in khaki before another day had rolled around.”
“We are heading for the front in the direction of Ypres. If you are going that way we would be very glad to accompany you, Colonel,” said Jack, as he received back the precious document from one of the officers, carefully folded it again, and replaced it in his bill book.
“Sorry to say that is not our present destination, my lad,” replied the colonel. “We are under orders to take our stand in another part of the line where stiffening is needed badly. All of us are eager to get our first taste of the real fighting. But if we can be of any assistance to you in other ways you have only to mention the same.”
He had said something aside to one of the other officers, who walked away to give some sort of order. Almost immediately a file of soldiers left the roadside camp and started off across fields, heading exactly in the direction whence the two American boys had just come.
Amos saw all this, and believed he could understand what it meant.
“They’re going to take a look in the brush for the wounded Taube man,” he told himself. “For one I hope they don’t run across him. Without his chart he isn’t so very dangerous. I reckon the colonel is afraid he may be able to draw a duplicate of the same from memory. A soldier takes as few chances as he can of letting the other side get valuable information. Yes, the colonel is right, I suppose.”