cket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
cheer.

Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
seat.

"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They don't believe
us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places."

"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if
this had happened in my native land--"

He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
into the night.

"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop? As I said
before, what we want is a live one."

Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.

"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of a mile from
here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
life."

The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anaemic, pale-faced youth
without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.

In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a prisoner," he
said. "We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
out!"

As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
Ford flung his rifle upon it.

"No, you don't!" he growled. "Get out!"

With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.

"My pay--my month's pay?" he stammered. "Can I take It?"

The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.

"Take it and get out," Ford commanded.

With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
papers inside.

"Quick!" cried Ford.

The