goot--see!"

Tom turned on his searchlight and saw crawling toward him a German
soldier, hatless and coatless, whose white face seemed all the more pale
and ghastly for the smear of blood upon it. He was quite without arms,
in proof of which he raised his open hands and slapped his sides and
hips. As he did so a long piece of heavy chain, which was manacled to
his wrist clanged and rattled.

"Ach!" he said, shaking his head as if in agony.

"Put your hands down. All right," said Tom. "Can you speak English?"

"Kamerad," he repeated and shrugged his shoulders as if that were
enough.

"You escape?" said Tom, trying to make himself understood. "How did you
get back of the French lines?"

"Shot broke--yach," the man said, his face lapsing again into a hopeless
expression of suffering.

"All right," said Tom, simply. "Comrade--I say it too. All right?"

The soldier's face showed unmistakable relief through his suffering.

"Let's see what's the matter," Tom said, though he knew the other only
vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the
light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which
was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his
suffering was the raw condition of his wrist where the manacle
encircled it and the heavy chain pulled. It seemed to Tom as if this
cruel sore might have been caused by the chain dragging behind him and
perhaps catching on the ground as he fled.

"The French didn't put that on?" he queried, rather puzzled.

The soldier shook his head. "Herr General," said he.

"Not the Americans?"

"Herr General--gun."

Then suddenly there flashed into Tom's mind something he had heard about
German artillerymen being chained to their guns. So that was it. And
some French gunner, or an American maybe, had unconsciously set this
poor wretch free by smashing his chain with a shell.

"You're in the French lines," Tom said. "Did you mean to come here?
You're a prisoner."

"Ach, diss iss petter," the man said, only half understanding.

"Yes, I guess it is," said Tom. "I'll bind your foot up and then I'll
take that chain off if I can and bind your wrist. Then we'll have to
find the nearest dressing station. I suppose you got lost in this
forest. I been in the German forest myself," he added; "it's
fine--better than this. I got to admit they've got fine lakes there."

Whether he said this by way of comforting the stranger--though he k