erly unlike my own.

The figure in the chair started up and hurried toward me, and then
Dunny's hands were holding my hands, his eyes looking into mine.

"There, Dev, there! Take it easy," the familiar voice was soothing me.
"Hold on to me, my boy, You are safe now. You're all right!"

My safety, however, seemed of small importance for the time being.

"Dunny," I implored, "listen! You have got to find out for me about a
girl. How am I to tell you, though? If I start the story, you'll think
I'm raving."

"I know all about it, Dev," my guardian reassured me. "I've seen Miss
Falconer. She's absolutely safe."

If that were so, I could relax, and I did with fervent thankfulness. Not
for long, however; my brain had begun to work.

"See here! I want to know who has been playing football with me," was my
next demand, which Dunny answered obligingly, if with a slightly dubious
face.

"That French doctor, nice young chap, said you weren't to talk," he
muttered, "but if I were in your place I'd want to know a few things
myself. It was this way, Dev. A fragment of a shell struck you--"

"A fragment!" I raised weak eyebrows. "I know better. Twenty shells at
least, and whole!"

"--and didn't strike your Teuton friends," he charged on, suddenly
purple of visage. "It was a true German shell, my boy, the devil looking
after his own. The man in the seat with you was cut up a bit; the other
two were thrown clear of the motor. If you hadn't already given the
alarm, they would probably have got off scot-free. As it was, the French
held a drumhead court martial a little later, and all three of the
fellows--well, you can fill in the rest."

I was silent for a minute while a picture rose before me: a dank, gray
dawn; a firing-squad, and Franz von Blenheim's dark, grim face. No
doubt he had died bravely; but I could not pity him; I had too clear a
recollection of the hall at Prezelay.

"As for you," Dunny was continuing, "you seem to have puzzled
them finely. There you were in a French uniform, at your last gasp
apparently, and with an American passport, that you seem to have clung
to through thick and thin, inside your coat. They took a chance on you,
though, because you had made them a present of the Franz von
Blenheim; and by the next day, thanks to Miss Falconer and the Duke of
Raincy-la-Tour, you were being looked for all over France.

"So that's how it stands. You're at Raincy-la-Tour now, at the duke's
chateau. The place