or had her in
their possession."

"They couldn't do that, Tom--get possession of her--could they?"

"There's no telling. I'm going to be doubly on the watch. That fellow
Blakeson is in the pay of the plotters, I believe. He has a big machine
shop, and he might try to duplicate my tank if he knew how she was made
inside."

"I see! That's why he was inquiring about a good machinist, I suppose,
though he'll be mightily surprised when he learns it was you he was
talking to the time your Hawk met with the little mishap."

"Yes, I guess maybe he will be a bit startled," agreed Tom. "But I
haven't seen him around lately, and maybe he has given up."

"Don't trust to that!" warned Ned.

The tank was now progressing easily along over fields, hesitating not
at small or big ditches, flow going uphill and now down, across a
stretch of country thinly settled, where even fences were a rarity.
When they came to wooden ones Tom had the workmen get out and take down
the bars. Of course the tank could have crushed them like toothpicks,
but Tom was mindful of the rights of farmers, and a broken fence might
mean strayed cows, or the letting of cattle into a field of grain or
corn, to the damage of both cattle and fodder.

"There's a barbed-wire fence," observed Ned, as he pointed to one off
some distance across the field. "Why don't you try demolishing that?"

"Oh, it would be too easy! Besides, I don't want the bother of putting
it up again. When I make the barbed-wire test I want some set up on
heavy posts, and with many strands, as it is in Flanders. Even that
won't stop the tank, but I'm anxious to see how she breaks up the wire
and supports--just what sort of a breach she makes. But I have a
different plan in mind now.

"I'm going to try to find a wooden building we can charge as we did the
masonry factory. I want to smash up a barn, and I'll have to pick out
an old one for choice, for in these war days we must conserve all we
can, even old barns."

"What's the idea of using a barn, Tom?"

"Well, I want to test the tank under all sorts of conditions--the same
conditions she'll meet with on the Western front. We've proved that a
brick and stone factory is no obstacle."

"Then how could a flimsy wooden barn be?"

"Well, that's just it. I don't think that it will, but it may be that a
barn when smashed will get tangled up in the endless steel belts, and
clog them so they'll jam. That's the reason I want to try a wooden