The others looked at his scowling face and the sight was too much for them. They threw themselves on the ground in convulsions of laughter.

They howled. They roared. They rolled over and over, until Tom himself caught the contagion and joined in with the rest. It was a long time before any one of them was able to speak.

"Stung!" choked Bart, while tears of merriment rolled down his cheeks.

"Forward! March!" gurgled Billy. "Pound me on the back, you fellows, or I'll have a fit."

"A grocer! Napoleon!" roared Frank. "Shades of Austerlitz and Waterloo!"

"And we fell for it!" yelled Tom. "Think of it, fellows! By the great horn spoon! We fell for it!"

They got themselves under control at last, though not without many interruptions, for again and again one of them would start to speak and go off into a peal of laughter.

"I'm as weak as a rag," gulped Billy. "I haven't laughed like this in all my life."

"It would make a hit in vaudeville," chuckled Bart. "Think of us sillies stalking along and going through shadow motions for a nut like that.

We're squirrel food, all right."

"Well, after all what could we do?" defended Frank. "We're not mind readers."

"Not even of a scrambled mind like that," interposed Billy.

"And we couldn't tell that he wasn't an officer," went on Frank, not heeding the interruption. "His uniform seemed to be all right, although a bit gaudy."

"That gives us a way out," said Bart. "We can say that we followed the uniform, not the man, and let it go at that. But, oh, boy! if the fellows of our regiment had seen us trotting along behind that lunatic, maybe they wouldn't make our life a burden."

"We'd never have heard the last of it," agreed Tom. "But what they don't know won't hurt them, and it's a safe bet that none of us will ever let out a squeak."

"It's lucky there wasn't any moving picture man handy," laughed Frank.

"He'd have had a film that would put all the rest out of business. But now let's get back to the cottage after this unfortunate hike of ours."

"Say," put in Bart, as a new thought struck him, "do you think those keepers could have caught on?"

"I don't think they tumbled," Billy rea.s.sured them. "They were too intent on catching Napoleon to think of anything else."

"Poor Napoleon," chuckled Frank. "I suppose he's back on St. Helena by this time."

"Well, there's one comfort, anyway," declared Tom. "He doesn't know that he put anything over on us. If he hasn't forgotten us altogether he thinks we're part of the Old Guard."

"They say a philosopher is one who can grin when the laugh is on himself," laughed Billy. "If that's so we're dandy philosophers."

All too soon that pleasant week was over, and the boys, refreshed and rested, went away, though with many a backward glance, to the stern work where they had already won their spurs and made their mark.

They started in on their work again with renewed zest and with quickened energy, for a battle was impending and they were anxious to take their part in driving back the Hun.

They saw Rabig frequently, and though they all disliked him heartily, he was still a soldier like themselves in the service of Uncle Sam, and they strove to disguise their feeling for the good of the common cause.

"He's a bad egg, all right," declared Tom, who stuck obstinately to his belief that Rabig had had some part in the escape of the German corporal, "but as long as we can't prove it, we'll have to give him a little more rope. But sooner or later he'll come to the end of that rope, and don't you forget it!"

Nick had come out of the court-martial that investigated the escape, not with flying colors, but with bedraggled feathers. The cut on his head had proved so slight as to arouse suspicion that it might have been self-inflicted. Still the motive for this did not seem adequate, and the upshot of the inquiry was that Rabig was confined a few days in the guardhouse and then restored to duty. But in the private books of the officers there was a black mark against him, and all of them would have been better pleased not to have had him in the regiment.

"Oh, well, don't let's talk about him," Frank summed up a discussion about the bully. "The whole subject leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I only hope he's the only rotten apple in the barrel."

"That's just the trouble'," replied Tom. "If that rotten apple isn't taken out of the barrel a good many more may be spoiled in less than no time."

"Sure enough," agreed Bart. "But I guess there isn't much danger in this case. If Nick had lots of friends that he might influence it might be different, but you notice that the fellows leave him to flock by himself."

"He's about as popular as the hives in summertime for a fact," commented Tom. "He'd be a mighty sight more at home if he were in the trenches on the other side."

"Maybe so," admitted Frank.

"What are you fellows chinning about?" broke in a familiar voice, and they turned to see d.i.c.k Lever regarding them with a friendly grin.

"h.e.l.lo, d.i.c.k," came from them all at once in a roar of welcome, for it was the first time they had seen him since he had rescued them from their German captors, and their feelings toward him were of the warmest nature.

"Where have you been keeping yourself?" asked Frank. "We've been looking for you to drop in and see us for a long time past."

"As a matter of fact, I did get down this way about a week ago," replied d.i.c.k, as he tried to shake hands with all four at once, "but the whole bunch of you were off on furlough."

"Sorry we missed you," said Frank. "Yes, we did get a few days off, and it didn't do us a bit of harm. We've all come back feeling the best ever."

"Ready to take another crack at the Huns, eh?" grinned d.i.c.k. "Some fellows never know when they have enough."

"You needn't talk," laughed Bart. "I'll bet you've been popping away at them every day since we saw you last."

"Oh, they've kept me pretty busy," said d.i.c.k carelessly. "The Hun flyers are getting pretty sa.s.sy just now, and we have to keep working hard to drive them back."

"I've noticed more of them flying over our lines than usual in the last day or two," remarked Billy.

"Say," broke in Tom, "this is sure our lucky day. Here comes Will Stone."

"We sure are lucky when two of the best fellows in the world drop in on us at the same time," said Frank, as he and his mates greeted the bronzed tank operator. "I don't know whether you two fellows know each other, but if you don't you've both lost something."

"Oh, we're not altogether strangers," smiled Stone, as he and d.i.c.k shook hands heartily. "Many a time I've seen his plane flying overhead, and it's made me feel rather comfortable to know that he was on the job, and that no Boche flyer would have a chance to drop something that would put Jumbo out of commission."

"It would have to be some bomb that would make junk of that big car of yours," said d.i.c.k. "I was flying pretty low the day we smashed the Boche lines and I saw the way Jumbo snapped those wires as though they were so many threads. That tank's a wonder and no mistake."

They were having such a good time and the time flew so rapidly that they were startled when the bugle blew and they were compelled to go to their respective quarters.

A few nights after his return Frank was a.s.signed to sentry duty on an important post on the front trenches. His beat terminated at a point where he could see a little shack that stood on the side of a hill.

Standing as it did in the battle zone; it had become little more than a ruin. Most of the thatched roof had been shot away, one side had gone altogether, and the other three sides leaned crazily toward each other.

It was a little after midnight when Frank thought he saw a gleam of light either in the cabin or close by it. It was very faint, scarcely more than the glimmer of a firefly, and it vanished instantly.

Still, it had been there. Cautiously, avoiding every twig with the stealth of an Indian, Frank crept toward the hut.