saw the French "75" making good practice against the vicious little
gadfly.

Higher and higher mounted the Fokker to get out of range, and still
Dennis kept on, remembering his appointment with the French
Generalissimo, and glancing alternately from the chart to the little
clock beside the aneroid barometer, whose registration was useless at
that height.

"Twenty-five minutes! Great Scott! can I do it?" he muttered, clutching
the control wheel with his frozen fingers.

* * * * *

"Well, messieurs, it is a pity, and I am afraid something must have
happened to that young officer," said General Joffre, consulting his
watch for the last time. "I must find another messenger to carry my
reply to the Commander-in-Chief of our Allies."

And then he stopped as a murmured exclamation broke from the group of
officers, and everyone looked up to the grey sky across which some
rainclouds were drifting.

"It is an aerial combat, mon General," said one of them. "_Ma foi!_ I
should not care to travel at that speed, let alone fight with nothing
under one's feet!"

Two dots scarcely larger than flies on a window-pane had suddenly
detached themselves from the rain clouds, and were manoeuvring
curiously in the direction of the village. Larger and larger they grew,
the smaller dot obviously trying to gain the advantage of height, and
mingling with the throb of the engines they could now hear the rattle of
a machine-gun.

"What is the meaning of this?" said the Generalissimo, fixing them with
his glass. "These machines are German. I can see the Iron Cross painted
upon them both. Send word to the battery yonder to make ready. It is a
raid, and they are adopting those manoeuvres to deceive us."

By the wall of the restaurant the young French chauffeur, Martique, who
had driven Dennis to that place, waited with a smile dancing in his
eyes, hoping against hope that the thing of which he alone knew was the
thing that was taking place up yonder!

He started when he heard the Generalissimo's order, for even yet he
could not be sure, but the dots had now grown so large that it was
possible to tell the make of the two machines, and somebody said: "The
first one is an Aviatik; the other is a Fokker."

If the seeming chase were a piece of German stage management it was
certainly being carried out with marvellous realism, for now Martique
could distinctly see the puffs of the machine-gun, and that the bullet