ermissible act.

Hospitals had been bombed before, but there was a chance that the
wandering night-bird had dropped his pills in ignorance of what lay
beneath him. Of late, however, hospitals and clearing stations had been
attacked with such persistence that there was very little doubt that the
enemy was deliberately carrying out a hideous plan.

"Ye don't say?" he repeated, and the girl noticed that his voice was a
little husky. "Were ye--" he hesitated.

"I was on convoy duty, fortunately," said the girl, "but that doesn't
save you in the daytime, and I have been bombed lots of times, although
the red cross on the top of the ambulance is quite clear--isn't it?"

Tam nodded.

"There was no damage?" he asked anxiously.

"Not very much in one way," she said, "he missed the hospital but got
the surgery and poor Hector--" She stopped, and he saw tears in her
eyes.

"Ye don't tell me?" he asked, startled.

She nodded.

"Puir Hector; well, that's too bad, puir wee little feller!"

"Everybody is awfully upset about it, he was such a cheery little chap.
He was killed quite--nastily." She hesitated to give the grisly details,
but Tam, who had seen the effect of high explosive bombs, had no
difficulty in reconstructing the scene where Hector laid down his life
for his adopted country.

When he got back to the aerodrome that night he found that the bombing
of hospitals was the subject which was exciting the mess to the
exclusion of all others.

"It's positively ghastly that a decent lot of fellows like German airmen
can do such diabolical things," said Blackie; "we are so helpless. We
can't go along and bomb his collecting stations."

"Fritz's material is deteriorating," said a wing commander; "there's not
enough gentlemen to go round. Everybody who knows Germany expected this
to happen. You don't suppose fellows like Boltke or Immelmann or
Richthoven would have done such a swinish thing?"

That same night One-Three-One was bombed again, this time with more
disastrous effects. One of the raiders was brought down by Blackie
himself, who shot both the pilot and the observer, but the raid was only
one of many.

The news came through in the morning that a systematic bombing of field
hospitals had been undertaken from Ypres to the Somme. At two o'clock
that afternoon Blackie summoned his squadron.

"There's a retaliation stunt on to-night," he explained; "we are getting
up a scratch raid into Germany. You fellows