the hands of the Huns, would spies have brought this word
from him to her?

And how--and how--and how----?

Her queries and surmises were utterly unanswerable. She turned the bit
of paper over and over in her fingers. She could not be mistaken about
Tom's handwriting. He had penciled those words.

It was true, any friend of Tom's who knew his handwriting and might
have picked up the loaded paper bomb, would have considered the written
line a personal message.

"Don't believe everything you hear."

But, then, what friends had Tom in this sector of the battle front save
his military associates and Ruth Fielding? The girl never for one
moment considered that the written line might have been meant for
anybody but herself.

And she did with it the very wisest thing she could have done. She
tore the paper into the tiniest of bits, and, as she continued her walk
to the Dupay farm, she dribbled the scraps along the grassy road.

She began to have a faint and misty idea of what it all meant--Tom's
disappearance, the general belief among his comrades that he was a
traitor, and this communication which had reached her hands in
seemingly so wonderful a manner.

Tom Cameron had been selected for some dangerous and secret mission.
It might have occasioned his entrance through the enemy's lines. He
was on secret service beyond the great bombarding German guns!

If this was so he was in extreme peril! But he was doing his duty!

Ruth's heart throbbed to the thought--to _both_ thoughts! His
dangerous work was not done yet. But it was very evident that he had
means of knowing what went on upon this side of the line of battle.

The men recently flying over her head in the French air machine must be
comrades of Tom's in the secret mission which had carried that young
fellow into the enemy's country. The message she had received might be
only one of several the flying men had dropped about Clair, and at the
request of Tom Cameron, the latter hoping that at least one of them
would reach Ruth's hands.

The girl knew that American and French flying men often carried
communications addressed to the German people into Germany, and dropped
them in similar "bombs." One of the President's addresses had been
circulated through a part of Germany and Austria by this means.

She had a feeling, too, that the man who had thrown the message to her
knew her. But Ruth could not imagine who he was. She might have
believed it