r!"

"Did you hear that?" asked Ned in a low voice.

"I should say so!" exclaimed Bob. "We ought to know who that is."

"Noddy Nixon, without a doubt!" remarked Jerry. "And up to his old
tricks! I hope he isn't going on the same transport with us!"

CHAPTER VII

OFF FOR FRANCE

Noddy Nixon needs no introduction to my old readers. This rich and
impudent lad had, more than once, done his best to injure the Motor
Boys, and, with the plotting of Jack Pender and Bill Berry, a
Cresville n'er-do-well, had too often succeeded.

"Well, I don't see anything of Bill or Jack," observed Jerry, as he
looked toward Noddy Nixon, and noted, that the bully was surrounded by
a group of strange recruits.

"Yes, if he's by himself he won't be so hard to handle," agreed Ned.
"But I wonder where he came from? He ought to be in jail!"

"I suppose he came from some training camp--same as we did," observed
Bob. "And he looks as though he had been well fed, too. He's as fat as
butter."

"That's Chunky all over--thinking of the eating end," laughed Ned.

"Yes, Noddy is fat all right--too fat!" declared Jerry. "He hasn't
been drilled as hard as we have, or else he got a desk position
somewhere and held on to it."

"Did you hear the bluff he was throwing about trying to enlist in the
air service?" asked Ned.

"Yes," agreed his tall chum. "Talk about his being an expert flier!
Say, do you remember his _Tin Fly_?"

"I should say so!" laughed Bob. "The flying machine that wouldn't go
up. That was a hot one! But keep quiet--he's looking over this way."

Noddy, indeed, seemed to have his attention attracted to the three
friends. At first he looked uncomprehendingly, and then, as the
features of the lads toward whom he had acted so meanly became
plainer, he stared and finally exclaimed:

"What are you fellows doing here?"

"The same as you, I imagine," was Jerry's cool answer. "We are going
to fight in France."

Jerry said afterward he wanted to add that he and his chums had
"volunteered" to do this fighting, but he did not think it would be
quite fair to the drafted men with Noddy who, to do them justice, were
in the same class as the best of patriots. The selective service law
solved many problems, but Noddy's was not among them. As the boys
learned later, the town bully had done his best to evade the draft,
and had only registered when threatened with military action.

Then he made a virtue of necessity and talked big a