Amos was feeling quite “chipper” as he called it, and there was certainly good cause for this high hope. They had accidentally run across what seemed to be a strong clue, and the uncertainty of the past was being relieved. Jack, on his part, was figuring out what he might get through the hands of the censor in his next letter home. It was Jack’s avowed intention to become a newspaper man when he entered the business world, and already he had shown great aptitude along the line. The descriptions he sent over to a paper which he had arranged to represent while abroad were graphic and thrilling. His pen pictures of conditions as he saw them gave an accurate view of the situation. Although the stern military censor might blue pencil all names, he could not destroy the vivid word painting as set down by Jack.
Besides this, Jack had contrived a clever little dodge whereby he hoped to snap off some stirring pictures. His camera was the smallest ever designed, but it had an expensive lens, and that meant more than half the battle.
Jack had it concealed, and so arranged matters that he could press the bulb and snap off a minute picture without any one being the wiser; and after being developed this could be enlarged to any size required.
No doubt, eventually, that clever little contrivance would get him into what Amos called a “peck of trouble.” It would doubtless be confiscated, but Jack hoped he might be able to secure a series of views well worth working for, ere that catastrophe came about.
As they walked on, the boys were continually coming upon fresh works of recent strenuous warfare. The army of invasion had held stubbornly to this region, and an unexpected drive on the part of the reinforced British had carried the Germans back some five miles or so to where they had prepared a second line of wonderful trenches.
Here a stone wall had been used as a breastworks, as was proven by the devastation caused by bursting shells. Great holes yawned in the ground where monsters from the German siege guns had buried themselves and exploded. And the boys looked in awe at the piled-up earth, in places marked with small, rudely fashioned wooden crosses, which told where late combatants lay side by side, their battle fever forever stilled.
Hardened soldiers might have gazed upon such things unmoved, but these boys were all unaccustomed to war’s devastation, and many times their hearts beat in sympathy with the people they saw in the desolated cottages by the way.
The afternoon was now wearing away and it was only natural for the two chums to begin to wonder where they were fated to pass the night.
Jack had roughed it many times in the past, when on the cattle range. He knew what a lone camp under the stars meant, and could stand exposure about as well as the next one.
All the same Jack was ready to confess that if given a choice he much preferred a roof over his head. The air felt raw and there was even a chance that a cold rain might set in before morning, which would be pretty disagreeable all around.