so, and I can get any trace of him, I'll go over the Rhine
to get him back," snapped Tom.

"And I'll go with you!" declared his chum.

It was a few days after they had inspected the German "dud," and the
boys were wondering what new developments might take place, the shelling
of Paris meanwhile continuing at intervals, that one evening the boys
were visited in their lodgings by Major de Trouville.

"Is there any news?" eagerly asked Tom, for he guessed that the French
officer would not be paying a merely social call. Those were the
strenuous days when such things had passed.

"Well, yes, news of a sort," was the answer. "But what I came to find
out was whether you were so taken with these lodgings that you could not
be induced to move."

"To move!" exclaimed Jack.

"Yes. Have you found anything unhealthful here?"

"Why, no," replied Tom, wonderingly. "We like it here. The landlord
couldn't be nicer, and we're in a good location."

"Nevertheless, I fear I shall have to ask you to change your quarters,"
went on the major, and by the quizzical smile on his face the boys
guessed that there was something in the wind.

"Let me ask you another question," went on the French officer. "Have you
been annoyed since you have been here?"

"Annoyed? How?" inquired Tom.

"By unwelcome visitors, or by strangers."

The boys thought for a moment.

"There's one chap who lives in the same building here, whom we've seen
on our staircase several times," said Jack, slowly. "Once I saw him
pause at our door with a key, as though he were going to enter, but he
heard me coming, and, muttering that he had taken too much wine and was
a bit hazy in his memory, he went on upstairs."

"I thought as much," the major said. "Was the man you speak of familiar
to you?"

"No, I can't say that he was," replied Jack, and Tom nodded his
acquiescence. "I never saw him before."

"Oh, yes you have," and the major smiled.

"I have? Where?"

"On the train, coming into Paris."

"You mean the German spy?" cried Jack.

"The same," answered the Frenchman. "That's just what he is, and he is
spying on you. Now, in view of what is going to happen, we don't want
that to go on. So I have come to ask you to change your lodgings, and I
think I can take you to one that will be most agreeable to you both."

"But what does all this mean?" asked Tom. "Is there----"

"There is 'something doing' as you say so picturesquely in the United
States," interru