ou see them marching off, even if they haven't their
uniforms yet? Jove, if I wasn't too old, I'd go in a minute!"

"Father!" cried Mary.

"Yes, I would!" he declared. "The German government has got to be
beaten, and we've got to do our bit; everybody has--man, woman and
child!"

"Yes," agreed Tom, in a low voice, "that's very true. But every one, in
a sense, has to judge for himself what the 'bit' is. We can't all do
the same."

There was a little silence, and then Mary went over to the piano and
played. It was a rather welcome relief, under the circumstances, from
the conversation.

"Mary, what do you think of Tom?" asked Mr. Nestor, when the visitor
had gone.

"What do I think of him?" And she blushed.

"I mean about his not enlisting. Do you think he's a slacker?"

"A slacker? Why, Father!"

"Oh, I don't mean he's afraid. We've seen proof enough of his courage,
and all that. But I mean don't you think he wants stirring up a bit?"

"He is going to Washington to-morrow, Father. He told me so to-night.
And it may be--"

"Oh, well, then maybe it's all right," hastily said Mr. Nestor. "He may
be going to get a commission in the engineer corps. It isn't like Tom
Swift to hang back, and yet it does begin to look as though he cared
more for his queer inventions--machines that butt down fences than for
helping Uncle Sam. But I'll reserve judgment."

"You'd better, Father!" and Mary laughed--a little. Yet there was a
worried look on her face.

During the next few nights Mr. Nestor made it a habit to take the short
cut from the railroad station, coming past the big fence that enclosed
one particular building of the Swift plant.

"I wonder if there's a hole where I could look through," said Mr.
Nestor to himself. "Of course I don't believe in spying on what another
man is doing, and yet I'm too good a friend of Tom's to want to see him
make a fool of himself. He ought to be in the army, or helping Uncle
Sam in some way. And yet if he spends all his time on some foolish
contraption, like a new kind of traction plow, what good is that? If I
could get a glimpse of it, I might drop a friendly hint in his ear."

But there were no cracks in the fence, or, if there were, it was too
dark to see them, and also too dark to behold anything on the other
side of the barrier. So Mr. Nestor, wondering much, kept on his way.

It was a day or so after this that Ned Newton paid a visit to the Swift
home. Mr. Swift was not i