d, by eating grapes in such quantities as seriously to reduce
the output of Rhenish wine. "But, oh, Ebeneezerr!" he added. "What
wouldn't I give for a good russet apple and a dipper of sweet cider."

"You're always thinking about apples and souvenirs," said Tom.

"You can bet I'm going to get a souveneerr in herre, all right!" Archer
announced. "Therre ought to be lots of good ones herre, hey?"

"Maybe they grow in furious what-d'you-call-'ems?" suggested sober Tom.

"If it keeps as level as this, we ought to be able to waltz into the
barrbed wirre by tomorrow night. This is the only thing about Gerrmany
that's on the level, hey?"

Toward evening they had the lesser of the two surprises which were in
store for them in the Black Forest. They were hiking along when suddenly
Tom paused and listened intently.

"What is it?" Archer asked.

"A bird," said Tom, "but I never heard a bird make a noise like that
before."

"He's chirrping in Gerrman," suggested Archer.

The more Tom listened, the more puzzled he became, for he had the
scout's familiarity with bird voices and this was a new one to him.

"Therre's a house," Archer said.

And sure enough there, nestling among the firs some distance ahead, was
the quaintest little house the boys had ever seen. It was almost like a
toy house with a picturesque roof ten sizes too big for it, and a funny
little man in a smock sitting in the doorway. Hanging outside was a
large cuckoo clock and it was the wooden cuckoo which Tom had heard.

Shavings littered the ground about this tiny, wilderness manufactory,
and upon a rough board, like a scout messboard, were a number of little
handmade windmills revolving furiously. Wooden soldiers and
stolid-looking horses with conventional tails, all fresh from the deft
and cunning hands which wielded the harmless jack-knife, were piled
helter-skelter in a big basket waiting, waiting, waiting, for the end of
the war, to go forth in peace and goodwill to the ends of the earth and
nestle snugly in the bottom of Christmas stockings.

This quaint old man could speak scarcely any English, but when the boys
made out that he was Swiss, and apparently kindly disposed, they
sprawled on the ground and rested, succeeding by dint of motions and a
few words of German in establishing a kind of intercourse with him. He
was apparently as far removed from the war as if he had lived in the
Fiji Islands, and the fugitives felt quite as safe at his rustic