luted.

"Will ye gang an' tak' a look at me eenstruments?" he asked
mysteriously.

"Why, Tam?"

"_Will_ ye, sir-r?"

Captain Blackie walked over to the machine and climbed up into the
fuselage. What he saw made him gasp, and he came back to where Tam was
standing, smug and self-conscious.

"You've been up to twenty-eight thousand feet, Tam?" asked the
astonished Blackie. "Why, that is nearly a record!"

"A' doot ma baromeeter," said Tam; "if A' were no' at fochty thousand,
A'm a Boche."

Blackie laughed.

"You're not a Boche, Tam," he said, "and you haven't been to forty
thousand feet--no human being can rise eight miles. To get up five and a
half miles is a wonderful achievement. Why did you do it?"

Tam grinned and slapped his long gloves together.

"For peace an' quiet," he said. "A've been chased by thairty air Hoons
that got 'twixt me an' ma breakfast, so A' went oop a bit an' a bit more
an' two fellers came behint me. There's an ould joke that A've never
understood before--'the higher the fewer'--it's no' deefficult to
understand it noo."

"You got back all right, anyhow," said Blackie.

"Aloon i' the vast an' silent spaces of the vaulted heavens," said Tam
in his sing-song tones which invariably accompanied his narratives, "the
Young Avenger of the Cloods, Tam the Scoot, focht his ficht. Attacked by
owerwhelmin' foorces, shot at afore an' behint, the noble laddie didna
lose his nairve. Mutterin' a brief--a verra brief--prayer that the Hoons
would be strafed, he climbt an' climbt till he could 'a' strook a match
on the moon. After him wi' set lips an' flashin' een came the
bluidy-minded ravagers of Belgium, Serbia an'--A'm afreed--Roomania.
Theer bullets whistled aboot his lugs but,

"His eyes were bricht,
His hairt were licht,
For Tam the Scoot was fu' o' ficht--

"That's a wee poem A' made oop oot o' ma ain heid, Captain, at a height
of twenty-three thoosand feet. A'm thinkin' it's the highest poem in the
wairld."

"And you're not far wrong--well, what happened?"

"A' got hame," said Tam grimly, "an' ain o' yon Hoons did no' get hame.
Mon! It took him an awfu' long time to fa'!"

He went off to his breakfast and later, when Blackie came in search for
him, he found him lying on his bed smoking a long black cigar, his eyes
glued to the pages of "Texas Tom, or the Road Agent's Revenge."

"I forgot to tell you, Tam," said Captain Blackie, "that von Zeidlitz is
down."

"Doon