in a couple of hours," called a private sitting
alongside Tom as some of them passed.

"Cantigny isn't Germany," another said.

"Sure it is," retorted a third; "all the land they hold is German soil.
Call us up when you get a chance," he added in a louder tone to the
receding ranks.

"Is Cantigny near here?" Tom asked.

"Just across the ditches."

"Are we going to try to take it?"

"_Try_ to? We're going to wrap it up and bring it home."

Tom was going to ask the soldier if he thought there would be any chance
for _him_, though he knew well enough that his business was behind the
lines and that the most he could hope for was to carry the good news (if
such it proved to be) still farther back, away from the fighting.

"This is going to be the first offensive of your old Uncle Samuel and if
we don't get the whole front page in the New York papers we'll be
peeved," Tom's neighbor condescended to inform him.

Whatever Uncle Samuel was up to he was certainly very busy about it and
very quiet. On the little village green which the cottage faced groups
of officers talked earnestly.

An enormous spool on wheels, which in the darkness seemed a mile high,
was rolled silently from somewhere or other, the wheels staked and bound
to the ground, and braces were erected against it. Very little sound was
made and there were no lights save in the houses, which seemed all to be
swarming with soldiers. Not a civilian was to be seen. Several soldiers
walked away from the big wheel and it moved around slowly like one of
those gigantic passenger-carrying wheels in an amusement resort.

Presently some one remarked that Collie was in and there was a hurrying
away--toward the rear of the village, as it seemed to Tom.

"Who's Collie?" he ventured to ask.

"Collie? Oh, he's the Stormy Petrel; he's been piking around over the
Fritzies' heads, I s'pose."

Evidently Collie, or the Stormy Petrel, was an aviator who had alighted
somewhere about the village with some sort of a report.

"Collie can't see in the daylight," his neighbor added; "he and the
Jersey Snipe have got Fritzie vexed. You going to run between here and
the coast?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do," said Tom. "I don't suppose I'll go
over the top, I'd like to go to Cantigny."

"Never mind, they'll bring it back to you. Did you know the old gent is
here?"

"Pershing?"

"Yup. Going to run the show himself."

"Are you going?"

"Not as far as I know. I was