oats with a good deal
of accompanying noise and started out into the river, just as Kaiser
Bill had started across Belgium. A woman with a baby in her arms
appeared in the doorway and stared at them--then banged the door shut.

They were greatly elated at their success and considered the taking of
the boat as a war measure, as probably the poor German woman did too.

Once upon the other side they walked boldly into the considerable town
of Norne and over the first paved streets which they had seen in many a
day. They did not get out of the way of people at all; they let the
people scurry out of _their_ way and were very bold and high and mighty
and unmannerly, and truly German in all the nice little particulars
which make the German such an unspeakable beast.

Tom forgot all about the good old scout rule to do a good turn every day
and camouflaged his manners by doing a bad turn every minute--or as
nearly that as possible. It was good camouflage, and got them safely
through the streets of Norne, where they must do considerable hunting to
find the home of old Melotte's friend Blondel. They finally located it
on the outskirts of the town and recognized it by the billet flag which
Melotte had described to them.

CHAPTER XXX

THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE

It was the success of their policy of boldness, together with something
which Madame Blondel told him, which prompted Tom to undertake the
impudent and daring enterprise which was later to make him famous on the
western front.

Blondel himself, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, had been pressed
into military service, but Madame Blondel remained in the little house
on the edge of the town in calm disregard of the German officers who had
turned her little home into a headquarters while the new road was being
made. For this, of course, was being done under the grim eye of the
Military.

The havoc wrought by these little despots, minions of the great despot,
in the simple abode of the poor old French couple, was eloquent of the
whole Prussian system.

The officer whose heroic duty it was to oversee the women and girls
slaving with pick and shovel had turned the little abode out of
windows, to make it comfortable for himself and his guests, treating the
furniture and all the little household gods with the same disdainful
brutality that his masters had shown for Louvain Cathedral. The German
instinct is always the same, whether it be on a small or a large
scale--