I started away from Cantigny. Mostly I was thinking
about it after I took that last special look at old Piff----"

Mr. Conne chuckled. "I see," he said encouragingly.

"Whoever that feller is," said Tom, "there's one thing sure. If he's
comin' as a soldier he won't get to the front very soon, 'cause they're
mostly the drafted fellers that are comin' now and they have to go in
training over here. I know, 'cause I've seen lots of 'em in billets."

"Hmm," said Mr. Conne.

"So if the feller expects to go to the front and get captured pretty
soon, prob'ly he's in a special unit. Maybe I might be all wrong about
it--some fellers used to call me Bullhead," he added by way of shaving
his boldness down a little.

But Mr. Conne, with hat tilted far down over his forehead and cigar at
an outrageously rakish angle, was looking straight ahead of him, at a
French flag across the way.

"Go on," he said crisply.

"Anyway, I'm sure the feller wouldn't be an engineer, 'cause mostly
they're behind the lines. So I thought maybe he'd be a surgeon----"

Mr. Conne was whistling, almost inaudibly, his eyes fixed upon the
flagpole opposite. "He was educated at Heidelberg," said he.

"I didn't think of that," said Tom.

"It's where he met L."

Tom said nothing. His line of reasoning seemed to be lifted quietly away
from him. Mr. Conne was turning the kaleidoscope and showing him new
designs. "He took L. home for the holidays," he quietly observed. "Old
Piff and the boys."

"I--I didn't think of that," said Tom, rather crestfallen.

"You didn't ride fast enough and make enough noise," Mr. Conne said. His
eyes were still fixed on the fluttering tricolor and he whistled very
low. Then he rubbed his lip with his tongue and aimed his cigar in
another direction.

"They were studying medicine there, I guess," he mused.

"That's just what my idea's about," said Tom. "It ain't an idea exactly,
either," he added, "but it's kind of come to me sudden-like. You know
what a _hunch_ is, don't you? There's something there about somebody
having a cataract, and that's something the matter with your eyes; Mr.
Temple had one. So maybe that feller L. that he met again is an eye
doctor. Long before the war started they told Mr. Temple maybe he ought
to go to Berlin to see the eye specialists there--'cause they're so
fine. So maybe the spy is a surgeon and L. is an eye doctor. It says how
he met him again on account of somebody having a cataract. And