As days succeeded days Don, George Glenn, T. Singleton Albert and Bobby Dunlap frequently met in the bureau, and it was on one of these occasions that Bobby took Don Hale aside, and, in a very impressive manner, remarked:
“Do you remember those nights at the Café Rochambeau when old Père Goubain told us a whole lot about German spies?”
“Yes,” answered Don.
“Well, I don’t think he was so very far wrong. I’m brighter than the next person, and it looks to me as if the trail were getting warm.”
“What do you mean?”
Don spoke in a mystified tone.
“Spies—spies!” chuckled Bobby.
“But where are they? Maybe you think I’m a spy?”
“If you are you’d better be careful of little Sherlock,” chirped Peur Jamais.
Some time later, the pilots were rather surprised and amused to see an old French peasant standing out front and gazing in evident wonder at the aviation fields. He was a typical son of the soil, wearing wooden sabots, or shoes; and his faded blue garments showed many traces of his labor in the fields. Almost primitive in appearance, and suggesting the uncouth, illiterate peasants which the French painter Millet loved to depict, he seemed so out of place amidst that most modern of all scenes—an aviation centre—that many of the boys found it rather hard to stifle an inclination to laugh.