he most jaunty air
about him. There was a far-away look, however, in Henri's eyes, for he
was thinking of France--thinking of her as she was now, and as she had
been when he last saw his native country.

"Mon Dieu! What a change! What desperate changes!" he was saying to
himself. "Every man able to bear arms, and of a suitable age, a
soldier; every one of them living the life followed by our
ancestors--those cave-men--dwelling in trenches throughout the months,
fighting like tigers to beat down the Germans. Well, it will be good
to join them, good to wear a uniform and line up shoulder to shoulder
with our fellows."

"Yes, good," Jules admitted--for Henri's last remark had been uttered
aloud--his face flushing at the thought. "What'll they do with us,
Henri? Send us to some instruction-camp, do you think, and keep us
there fooling about, training, drilling, doing things that I hate--that
we all hate?"

"Poof! Not they. You seem to forget, Jules, that you and I have done
our training; and, although we may not be very skilful soldiers, we can
both of us shoot, know our drill sufficiently well, and if put to it
can dig with the best of them. No, I'm hopeful that we shall jump out
of these clothes into uniform, and shall almost as promptly jump into
the trenches and find ourselves engaged in fighting the enemy."

It was with real regret that the two Frenchmen parted with their
English companion on arrival in London.

"Of course, we'll all of us make the same sort of promises," laughed
Stuart, as he gripped their hands at parting. "We'll swear to look one
another up, to meet again shortly, and possibly, if we are rash, to
write to one another; and just as certainly we shall find it awfully
hard to meet, and, in fact, are more likely to knock across each other
by pure accident than by design. It's always like that in warfare, and
more than ever now in this conflict. Well, an revoir! That's the
word, isn't it, Henri? Au revoir! Here's wishing that we may meet
again soon; and, better than all, hoping that we shall rapidly whop the
Germans. Au revoir! We have had splendid times together."

They had had a wonderful adventure indeed, and that escape from Germany
was one which, almost at once, gave interest of quite considerable
degree to the public, both British and French. For journalists
ferreted out the fact that Jules and Henri were fresh from Germany, and
though the two young fellows were modest enou