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Rh ment up there while the two men were conversing on the porch. Perhaps Bessie was listening to what they said."

Tom's words gave his chum a new thought.

"Oh, it would certainly be just like Bessie to do it! She seemed to be full of clever ideas."

Tom, being mystified by such words, he naturally sought further information.

"What would she do?" he demanded.

"Send me that mysterious message by the little hot-air balloon," Jack announced with a vein of pride in his voice, feeling delighted over having solved the puzzle that had baffled him for so long.

"It hardly seems probable," Tom answered softly. "At the same time it isn't altogether impossible."

"How far are we from the French front, do you think, Tom?" pursued his comrade, determined to sift the whole thing out.

"Twenty miles or so, I should imagine."

"That isn't very far. Once I caught just such a little balloon in a tree in our yard that had a tag on it, telling that it had been set free in a village that lay seventy miles off. The wind had carried it along furiously, so that it covered all that distance before losing buoyancy, and coming down in the heavy night air."