te beyond human aid. He lay, mangled out of all semblance to a human
being, amid the tangled wreckage of the car.

The fat cigar-shaped envelope of the balloon stood almost upright, and
though it looked not the least like a police telephone station now, it
was easy to see how, from a distance in the dim light, it might have
suggested a little round domed building.

"How do you s'pose it happened?" Archer asked.

"I don't know," said Tom. "It's an observation balloon, that's sure.
Maybe it was on its way back from the lines to somewhere or other. Hurry
up, let's see what there is; it'll be daylight in two or three hours and
we don't want to be hanging around here. They might send a rescue party
or something like that, if they know about it."

"Morre likely they don't," said Archer.

"I guess it only happened tonight," said Tom, "or more gas would have
leaked out. Let's hunt for the eats and things."

The wreckage of the car proved a veritable treasure-house. There was a
flashlight and a telescopic field glass, both of which Tom snatched up
with an eagerness which could not have been greater if they had been
made of solid gold. In the smashed locker were two good-sized tins of
biscuit, a bottle of wine and several small tins of meat. Tom emptied
out the wine and filled the bottle with water out of the five-gallon
tank, from which they also refreshed their parched throats. The food
they "commandeered" to the full capacity of their ragged pockets.

"And look at this," said Archer, hauling out a blouse such as the
hanging German wore; "what d'ye say if I wearr it, hey? And the cap,
too? I'll look like an observation ballooner, or whatever you call 'em."

"Good idea," said Tom, "and look!"

"A souveneerr?" cried Archer.

"The best _you_ ever saw," Tom answered, rooting in the engine tool
chest by the aid of the flashlight and hauling out a pair of rubber
gloves.

"What good are those?" said Archer, somewhat scornfully.

"_What good!_ They're a passport into Switzerland."

"Do you have to wear rubber gloves in Switzerland?" Archer asked
innocently, as he ravenously munched a biscuit.

"No, but you have to wear 'em when you're handling electrified wire,"
said Tom in his stolid way.

"G-o-o-d _night_! We fell in soft, didn't we!"

Indeed, for a couple of hapless, ragged wanderers, subsisting wholly by
their wits, they had "fallen in soft." It seemed that the very things
needed by two fugitives in a hostile cou