marked the
location of a military hospital. Ah!... Yes, some came back. But even
then they must brand their pain-racked sanctuary with the mercy
imploring emblem of the Red Cross so that enemy planes, bent on
devastation, would mingle mercy with hope of victory and save their
bombs for those not yet carried into the long wards where white-robed
doctors and nurses battled with death and spoke words of hope to the
hopeless.

It was a sorry world! McGee, who but a few short minutes ago was
entranced by the beauty of the world, now felt a sudden, marked disgust.
He pulled his stick back sharply. He would climb out of it! He would get
up against the ceiling, where the world became a dim, faint blur or was
lost altogether in a kindly obliterating ground haze.

On McGee's part the action was nothing more than an unconscious reaction
to distressing thoughts. Larkin, however, on seeing the sudden climb,
grinned with delight. This climb for altitude was nothing more than the
prelude to a dive that would start them into a merry game of hare and
hound. So McGee had forgotten all about his doleful sermon against
dog-fighting? And so soon. Ha! Trust the freckled "Little Shrimp" to
feel blood racing through his veins when motors are singing sweetly.

Instead of following, Larkin decided to nose down and offer more
tantalizing bait.

McGee, seeing the dive, found it more than he could resist. Besides, a
merry little chase would serve to wash the brooding thoughts from his
mind. This was a morning for sport, for jest, for youth--for hazard!

Forward went the stick and he plunged down the backwash of Larkin's
diving plane, his motor roaring its cadenced challenge. This was
something like! Sky and ground were rushing toward each other. The
braces were screaming like banshees; the speed indicator hand was
mounting with a steady march that made one want to dive on and on and on
until--

Larkin, in the plane ahead, brought his stick backward as he made ready
to go over in a tight loop. McGee smiled and followed him over. When
they came out of the loop they were in the same relative
position--Larkin the hare, McGee the tenacious hound.

For the next few minutes the open-mouthed countrymen in the fields below
were treated to a series of aerial gymnastics which must have sent their
own pulses racing and which might well serve them for fireside narration
for years to come.

The two darting hawks Immelmanned, looped, barrel-rolled, sid