A JOYOUS REUNION

Shouting like so many maniacs, they rushed toward him. At the same
instant Tom, too, began to run, and in a moment they had their arms
around him, and were hugging him, pounding him, mauling him,
exclaiming, questioning, laughing, rejoicing, all in one breath.

Tom was back with them again, good old Tom, their chum, their comrade,
Tom, over whose fate they had spent so many sleepless hours, Tom, for
whom any one of them would have risked his life, Tom who they knew was
captured, and who they feared might be dead.

There he was, the same old Tom, with face and body thin, with hair
unkempt and matted, with traces showing everywhere of the anxiety and
suffering he had undergone, and yet with the same indomitable spirit
that neither captivity nor threatened death had broken, and the same
smile upon his lips and twinkle in his eyes.

"Easy, easy there, fellows," he protested laughing. "Let me come up
for air. And before anything else, lead me to some grub. I haven't
eaten for so long that there's only a vacuum where my stomach ought to
be."

"You bet we'll lead you to it," cried Bart.

"An anaconda will have nothing on you when we get through filling you
up," promised Billy.

"What did I tell you, fellows," cried Frank delightedly. "Didn't I say
the old boy'd be coming in some morning and asking us if breakfast was
ready?"

Tom was giving Frank the long-lost letter he had been carrying when
Corporal Wilson came up with the relief and their greeting was almost
as boisterous and hilarious as that of his own particular chums had
been, for Tom was a universal favorite in the regiment, and they had
all mourned his loss.

They would have overwhelmed him with questions, but Frank interposed.

"Nothing doing, fellows," he said. "This boy isn't going to say
another word until we've taken him to mess and filled him up till he
can't move. After that there'll be plenty of time for a talk and we'll
keep him talking till the cows come home."

It was a rejoicing crowd that took Tom back to the main body of the
regiment, where he almost had his hands wrung from him. They piled his
plate and filled his coffee cup again and again and watched him while
he ate like a famished wolf.

"Tom's running true to form," joked Frank, as they saw the food vanish
before his onslaught.

"Whatever else the Huns took away from him, they left him his
appetite," chuckled Billy.

"Left it?" grinned Tom, as he attac