Jack managed to get back safely to the nest where he had hidden at the
time of the excitement, when Potzfeldt and his men were in the field. He
gave a sigh of relief after it was all over.

Soon the young aviator settled down to try to get some sleep, as some
time still remained before dawn would break. He meant to be early astir.
There was danger in the air, as he might be discovered unless he
arranged for a better hiding place than the covert of bushes where he
now lay.

Whether his sleep was worth while, or rendered uneasy by dreams, Jack
never told. He was awake though, when the sun peeped above the horizon,
and began to bestir himself. Presently people would be moving about.
Some of the men might even come out to the open field again, to look at
the telltale marks. And if they chanced to suspect that one of the crew
of the Caudron had been left behind, a hasty search was apt to reveal
his presence.

Accordingly Jack commenced to retire deeper into the wood, and managed
by great care to cover his tracks fairly well in so doing. Finally he
found a place that seemed to him about as good as anything he might
expect to run across; and so he crawled into the bushes again.

Then he had a most pleasing task to start upon, which was nothing more
nor less than that of appeasing his appetite, never more voracious, he
fancied, than just then. Without a twinge of conscience regarding the
fact that it was stolen food he disposed of, Jack commenced his morning
meal.

"I'm only enjoying some of the good stuff that scoundrel deprived Bessie
of," he told himself, with a grin of contentment, after he had eaten
until he could not take another bite. "Besides, everything is fair in
war-times. When you're raiding through the enemy's country it's supposed
you'll live on the spoils around you. Well, I'm going to live, and Carl
Potzfeldt is my enemy, all right. He's proved that in a dozen different
ways."

That idea set him to thinking about Bessie again, how she had taken such
a queer way to try to warn him, after overhearing her guardian plotting
with one of his men the injury to one or both of the young Americans.

"Now I wonder," Jack mused, as he lay in perfect peace with the world,
for he had eaten his fill, "how he knew we had joined the Lafayette
Escadrille. But then those German spies learn a lot of things, and he
may have been keeping tabs on Tom and me right along. Deep down in his
heart he suspected we'd bother him, an