the side of the ups. The time
came when the downs had an inning.

Bad luck overtook Bob Haines and Dicky Mann while on an observation
flight far over the firing lines and well inside territory occupied
by the enemy. They were on their outward journey, bound for a point
which they hoped to photograph quickly and then run for home. The
day was not an ideal one for flying, as shifting clouds gathered here
and there, some high up, some low. When they were in the vicinity
of their objective the clouds beneath them obscured their view to an
annoying extent. They had seen no other plane, friend or enemy,
since they had left their own lines. Suddenly, without the slightest
warning, the engine stopped. Bob switched off the power, switched
it on again, and repeated the maneuver again and again while volplaning
to preserve their momentum.

Try as he would, he could not get a single explosion out of the motor.
Of fuel he had plenty. His wires and terminals---so much as he could
see of them---were apparently in good order, but the engine had just
coolly stopped of its own accord, and could not be coaxed to start again.

Dicky looked round at Bob from the observer's seat in the fuselage
and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. His glance fell on Bob's white,
set face, and he saw that Bob was methodically going over one thing
after another, and trying first this, then that, as if examining
every part of the plane's mechanism that he could reach. They were
still above the low-lying clouds that hid the earth.

"Engine?" queried Dicky.

Bob nodded. Still he ran his hands over the controls, as if loath
to believe that he had exhausted every possibility of finding and
rectifying the trouble. It was all in vain.

Still they swept lower and lower. Soon they would be below the clouds,
and soon after that, landing so far inside the German lines that by
no possibility could they hope to regain their own. It was a
bitter time for Bob. Dicky, curiously enough, took the first
realization of their predicament less hard. He was all eyes to see
what fate had in store for them in the way of a landing place.

As they swept through the last bank of clouds and the country below
spread before them, they saw that it was level pasture land for the
most part, divided by green hedges, with here and there a cultivated
field. A village lay some distance to the left, a mere cluster of
mean houses. No chateau or large building was in sight,