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38 Tom, for it seemed to him that it meant considerable to try to discover who had sent the message by such a strange channel.

Jack pondered. Then all at once he looked up with a light in his eyes.

"You've thought of something!" exclaimed the other pilot eagerly.

"Well, it might be possible, although I hardly believe she'd be the one to go to such trouble. Still, she had children, she told me, at her home in Lorraine, back of Metz; and this is a child's toy, this little hot-air balloon."

"Do you mean that woman you assisted a week or so ago? Mrs. Neumann?" asked Tom, quickly.

"Yes, it was only a little thing I was able to do for her, but she seemed grateful, and said she hoped some day to be in a position to repay the favor. Then later on I learned she had secured permission to cross over to the German lines, in order to get to her family. She is a widow with six children, you know, a native of Lorraine, and caught by accident in one of the sudden furious rushes of the French, so that she had been carried back with them when they retreated. At the time she had been serving as a Red Cross nurse among the Germans. It was on that account the French allowed her to