Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/128

118, all the same," came the steady answer. "Never a batch of Boche prisoners is put behind the barbed-wire enclosure but what I find a chance to look 'em over and air my limited German vocabulary."

"Trying to find out if there are any Lorrainers in the bunch—is that what you mean?"

"It is," the other told him, smiling at the accurate guess made by Tom.

"I suppose," continued Tom, "you've run across quite a few of them, and some Alsatians in the bargain; for the Prussian war-lords saw to it that few, if any, escaped the draft."

"Oh, I picked out dozens of men who claimed they had homes in Lorraine, and every mother's son of them was fighting in the Hun army because of compulsion. A lot of them lied, of course, because their names told that they came of German stock, their people having settled there after the war of Seventy-one had given the country to Germany."

"And at last ran across the one you most wanted to meet, did you?"

"I did come on a chap who admitted his home was just on the other side of the border, and who knew all about General von Berthold. Yes, and the Anstey family as well. From him I learned that Gerald Anstey was the name of Jeanne's and