Page:Air Service Boys Flying for Victory.djvu/41

Rh "Wouldn't it be queer if he should prove to be the very one? It doesn't seem reasonable to me."

"Why not?" demanded his companion quickly. "Couldn't a German general conspire to lay hands on the property of a relative just as easily as any ordinary person? Haven't they been accused of stealing most of the valuables in Belgium and Northern France as spoils of war, from priceless paintings and works of art to family plate and jewelry?"

"I reckon you're about right, Tom, so far as that goes," agreed Jack, finally impressed by what his chum said. "General Anton von Berthold—if we find out that is his first name it would settle it for me. And then we could perhaps learn from one of the prisoners we find in the barbed wire stockade something about his goings-on, where he's putting up at present, and all that, you know."

"And in the meantime don't you think Jeanne would like something to eat?" asked Tom. "How could she ever have managed to make her way through the Boche lines, and get to where you ran across her?"

"I've tried to find out," Jack told him, "She mentions something about being taken by a neighbor after that man carried her sister away on his horse. They told her that her mother had