of leg.

* * * * *

The next morning Tam called on Blackie in his office and asked to be
allowed to take certain liberties with his machine, a permission which,
when it was explained, was readily granted. He went up in the afternoon
and headed straight for the enemy's lines. He was flying at a
considerable height, and Captain Mueller, who had been on a joy ride to
another sector of the line and had descended to his aerodrome, was
informed that a very high-flying spotter was treating Archie fire with
contempt and had, moreover, dropped random bombs which, by the greatest
luck in the world, had blown up a munition reserve.

"I'll go up and scare him off," said Captain Mueller. He focussed a
telescope upon the tiny spotter.

"It looks more like a fast scout than a spotter," he said, "yet there
are obviously two men in her."

He went up in a steep climb, his powerful engines roaring savagely. It
took him longer to reach his altitude than he had anticipated. He was
still below the alleged spotter with its straw-stuffed observer when
Tam dived for him.

All that the nursing of a highly trained mechanic could give to an
engine, all of precision that a cold blue eye and a steady hand could
lend to a machine-gun, all that an unfearing heart could throw into that
one wild, superlative fling, Tam gave. The engine pulled to its last
ounce, the wings and stays held to the ultimate stress.

"Tam!" said Mueller to himself and smiled, for he knew that death had
come.

He fired upward and banked over--then he waved his hand in blind salute,
though he had a bullet in his heart and was one with the nothingness
about him.

Tam swung round and stared fiercely as Mueller's machine fell. He saw it
strike the earth, crumple and smoke.

"Almichty God," said the lips of Tam, "look after that yin! He wis a
bonnie fichter an' had a gay hairt, an' he knaws richt weel A' had no
malice agin him--Amen!"

CHAPTER V

ANNIE--THE GUN

"A've noticed," said Tam, "a deesposition in writin' classes to omit the
necessary bits of scenery that throw up the odious villainy of the
factor, or the lonely vairtue of the Mill Girl. A forest maiden wi'oot
the forest or a hard-workin' factory lass wi'oot a chimney-stalk, is no
more convincin' than a seegair band wi'oot the seegair, or an empty pay
envelope."

"Why this disquisition on the arts, Tam?" asked Captain Blackie testily.

Three o'clock in the morning