people in the daytime."

"We got plenty of time to think it out," Tom answered doggedly, "'cause
we'll be in the woods a couple of days and nights and that's where
thoughts come to you."

"We'd be big fools, afterr gettin' all the way down to the frontierr to
cross the riverr and go huntin' forr a road in broad daylight," said
Archer; "we'd only get caught."

"Well, we'll get caught then," retorted Tom.

"Anyway, I think the old fellow's half crazy," Archer persisted. "He's
got roads on the brain. He jumps all around from Norrne to Passaic
and----"

"He gave us something to eat," said Tom curtly.

"Well, I didn't say he didn't, did I?" Archer snapped. "If we'd had any
sense, we'd have stayed therre all night like he wanted us to. Therre
wouldn't have been any dangerr in that old shack, a hundred miles from
nowherre."

"We're safest in the hills," said Tom.

"It's going to rain, too," Archer grumbled.

Tom made no answer and they scrambled in silence up the uninviting
hillside, till old Melotte's shack could be seen far below with the dim
light in its windows.

"You'rre so particularr about not bein' caught," Archer began again,
"it's a wonder you wouldn't think morre about that when we get down
close to the borrderr. If I've got to be caught at all I'd ratherr be
caught now."

They had regained the height above the little hamlet and to the south
they could see the clustering lights of Strassbourg and here and there a
moving light upon the river.

"We've got to cross that, too, I s'pose," Archer said sulkily.

Tom did not answer. The plain fact was that they were both thoroughly
tired out, with that dog-tiredness which comes suddenly as a reaction
after days of nerve-racking apprehension and hard physical effort. For
the first two days their nervous excitement had kept them up. But now
they were fagged and the tempting invitation to remain at the hovel had
been too strong for Archer. Moreover, this new scheme of Tom's to divert
their course in a hazardous quest for Florette Leteur was not at all to
his liking. But mostly he was tired and everything looks worse when one
is tired.

"We're not going to keep on hiking it tonight, are we?" he demanded.

"You said yourself that the old man was kind of--a little off, like,"
Tom answered patiently. "He's got the bug that he's very shrewd and that
he can always get the best of the Germans. Do you think I'd take a
chance staying there? We took a chance as it w