nt at that no later than yesterday, and Tom's name isn't
there. That seems to cut out everything except capture by the Huns,
doesn't it?"

"What else is there?" asked Bart gloomily.

"Just one thing," replied Frank, "and that is that Tom has got away
from the Huns but hasn't yet got back to us. I know what that boy is.
He isn't the kind to settle down and tell himself that he's a prisoner
and that's all there is to it. There isn't a bone in his head, and
he's been busy every minute thinking up some plan to get away. You
know what the boches are doing now. They're getting so short of men
that they're using prisoners right behind the lines in cutting brush
and hauling guns and that sort of thing. Of course it's dead against
all the rules of war, but a little thing like that doesn't bother the
Germans. Now if that's going on there are lots of chances to escape
that the prisoners wouldn't have if they were all huddled together in a
prison camp under the rifles of their guards. Get me? Picture Tom out
in the thick woods going meekly ahead doing as he is told without
making a break for freedom. Not on your life! Some way or other he'll
slip off, and some fine day you'll see the old scout come walking in
and asking us if breakfast's ready."

"It sounds good," said Bart unconvinced, "but I'm afraid it's a dream."

"All guess work," chimed in Billy. "We don't know anything."

"No," admitted Frank, "but we know Tom."

CHAPTER VI

THE COMING DRIVE

"That big German drive seems to have slipped a cog somewhere," Bart
remarked to his comrades, a few days later, as they were resting after
a hard morning's work at organizing the position that their division
was holding.

"I suppose the Crown Prince is making up a new time-table," grinned
Billy. "He seems to have a passion for that. He ought to have been a
railroad man."

"The trouble is that they always go wrong," laughed Frank. "I'll bet
he's cross-eyed."

"Yet the Heinies fall for them every time," said Billy. "I suppose
they figure that just by the law of chance one of them will have to be
right some time."

"I thought that the drive had started the other morning, when the
Germans came down like wolves on a fold," said Bart. "But it seems
that things were quiet on other parts of the line, so that this must
have been just a local operation."

"Local operation!" snorted Billy. "In other days it would have been
counted a big battle. Why, if Wa