I don't want
to get out of sight of the place. He might make a round, and carry the
birds away while we were engaged in a hunt half a mile off. And it may
be of much more importance that those live birds arrive in the French
camp than that we should bag the spy."

"I get you, Tom; so let's commence our little man-hunt right away."

The two friends set off. Tom tried to follow the course he believed the
spy must have taken on quitting the old farmhouse ruins. That his
reckoning was clear he proved several times by pointing out to his
companion plain evidences that some other person had passed along the
way before them.

Here the marks of shoes could be detected in the soft earth. A little
further on, and at a point where the man must have crawled in order to
keep from being seen, they found tracks where his toes had dragged
along, as well as the indentation of his knees in the soil.

Presently they arrived at the terminus of the stone wall, about the only
thing remaining intact connected with the French farm. There was not a
single tree showing signs of life in that patch of sombre forest; where
shell-fire had failed to do the work of destruction a malicious hand had
girdled the trunk with a keen-edged tool, and thus encompassed the doom
of the trees.

Tom came to a pause.

"I reckon we've come far enough," he said, taking a look over toward the
fragment of a house on the slight elevation, which could just be seen
from their present position.

"I'd have liked to catch up with that duck and march him back to camp,
along with his feathered messengers," Jack grumbled disappointedly.
"Somehow I hate and despise a spy above all created things."

The youths set their faces once more in the direction of the ruins,
where they soon arrived. Jack half feared that in spite of them the cage
and its feathered inmates had been spirited away. He hastened inside
ahead of his companion and then called out cheerily:

"It's all right, Tom, and nobody at home. Here's the wicker cage and the
pigeons, just as we left them!"

"As the afternoon is passing, and we have a long distance to go, we'd
better be making a start," Tom remarked, when he reached the open door.

"Let me carry the pigeon cage, Tom, as you have the gun," suggested
Jack, after slipping his hand through the ring at the top. "Say, perhaps
the boys won't give us a laugh, to see what queer game we've brought
back from our hunt!"

They left the ruins of the once pea