Still no Jack! He grew more and more concerned, and began to picture all sorts of grievous things as having happened to his chum.
Several times he thought he heard the well known voice near by, but on each occasion discovered that he had deceived himself. Tom felt he could stand it no longer, and had even commenced to set forth when, to his delight, he discovered Jack coming.
"But what's he doing with that mite of a French child?" Tom asked himself, staring in wonder and perplexity. "A cunning little girl she seems to be; but a battlefield isn't just the place for such an innocent. Poor thing! I suppose she's lost all her kin, and Jack brought her along because he couldn't let her stay at the ruins of her home and starve."
He was so filled with joy over the coming of his chum, who did not seem to be wounded in the least, that everything else was forgotten.
"Letters from home, Jack, old scout; hurry your stumps!" he called out, waving the epistles above his head.
Jack, still in his pilot's dress, was so eager to hurry that he picked up the little six-year-old French child, and ran the last fifty yards.
"Did you get any yourself, Tom?" he demanded, as he came up; and then immediately added: "I see you have some, and by the same token one of them has a French stamp on it--from Nice!"
"Oh, it's Bessie Gleason," said Tom with a twinkle in his eye. "You remember my telling you she promised to write to me if I'd answer and let her hear what stunts the air boys were pulling off over here in the Argonne. Let you read it if you care to, Jack."
"Very good of you, Tom," grinned the other. "But excuse me while I look over my own letters. And say, perhaps you'll make friends with this little girl here until I get through. I've got something to tell about her that will give you a thrill, I reckon."
It was just like Jack to say enough to set his chum guessing, and then leave him "up in the air" so to speak. Tom looked again at the child. He could see that he had made no mistake when thinking she was winsome, at first sight. He also knew that it would be impossible to make Jack talk until he had read several times over the letter Bessie had written to him, and it was a very fat letter.
"Come and make friends with me, little girl," Tom said. "Can you speak English, I wonder, or will I have to try my stumbling French on you?
What is your name?"
"It is Jeanne, M'sieu!" lisped the child, sweetly, and Tom was more than ever drawn toward her when he saw the appealing smile on her face.
"Jeanne, is it? A very pretty name too. Jeanne what?" he went on. And as Tom always won the confidence of children by his kindly manner she drew closer to him, and he took her little hand in his and squeezed it.
"Jeanne Anstey, M'sieu. And my sister's name, it is Helene," she told him.
"Oh! then you have a sister, have you?" Tom continued. "Where is Helene just now, Jeanne?"
The child's eyes immediately filled with tears. Still, with a queer little French shrug that was almost comical in one so very young, she said pathetically:
"Ah, M'sieu, it is the pity that I do not know. That bad man took her away while my poor mamma lay dying, trying to hold Helene. Me, mamma hid from the man. I sometimes wish it had been me he took on his horse with him, instead of Helene."
Tom began to wonder what lay back of all this. He looked toward Jack, to see that the other had paused in his reading as if to listen.
"Tell you all about it as soon as I get through this letter from my mother, Tom," the other remarked. "Well worth waiting to hear, too, I give you my word. One of the queerest things that ever happened to me.
I've already more than half promised Jeanne we'll try our level best to find Helene, her twin sister, for her."
"Nice of you I'm sure," chuckled Tom; "but I want to hear what it's all about before I cast my vote. Little time we've got these busy days to go chasing around the country hunting for lost children, sorry as I feel for the little thing."
"Just wait, and don't take snap judgment, that's all, Tom. Guess I know about how it'll strike you. Give me five minutes more to clean up here, and I'll tell you everything."
So Tom continued to amuse himself by talking with the wonderfully bright little French child, who proved more and more interesting on further acquaintance. Undoubtedly one of her parents had been English, a fact which would account for her speaking the language so correctly. From her name of Anstey he concluded this must have been her father, while the mother was very likely French, hence Jeanne and that other name, Helene.
"Now I'm ready to explain things, Tom," announced Jack, who wore the marks to tell that he, too, along with Tom, had reached the rank of sergeant in the Flying Corps.
"Glad to hear you say so, because you've managed to get me as curious as any old woman," grumbled Tom. "First of all, tell me how you fared back there over the battlelines. You didn't seem at all surprised to find me here; yet I reckon you knew I took a tumble?"
"Oh, I met Lefty Marr on the way here, and he told me you'd come back in good shape. But poor Hennessy was badly mauled, they say. How about him?
As good an observer as there is in the whole sector!"
"Pretty badly knocked out, and his flying days are about finished, I'm afraid," Tom admitted. "He'll be months in the sick ward; and by the time he gets to going we Yankees will have sewed up the game. Go to it now, Jack."
"Oh, I managed to get in a circus after I saw you go down, Tom," the other replied. "I was feeling pretty punk and ugly because I didn't know whether I'd ever see you again, for it looked as if you'd either been killed or fallen into the hands of the Boches--and that was almost as bad a job.
"Well, we had a glorious little run for our money, and I sent down one Hun, and crippled another chap's machine so that he had to turn tail and scoot for home. Then came three other big Gothas that set me to spinning on my head. But after they'd chased me for miles, a leak in my tank let out every drop of petrol; and so the only thing to do was to drop down and make a landing.
"Luck favored us and we dropped on to a field. The Huns hung around a bit as if they wanted to make sure of us; but Morgan and I managed to crawl into a thicket, and so they went away finally.
"We were several miles from our base, and with no petrol to be had for love or money. Morgan said he'd stay by the plane while I walked all the way to get a supply. Tom, it was the luckiest thing going for this child here that I decided on taking that walk along the woods road; I don't know what would have become of her otherwise."
He stopped speaking to pat the black-haired child caressingly. That was really one of the finest things marking the conduct of the American soldiers in France--their respect for women and their love for children.
Those boys in khaki captured myriads of French mothers' hearts by the way they romped with the youngsters and bought them all sorts of dainties at the Y. M. C. A. huts.
"I came on her suddenly, and of course stopped to say a few words, because it is hard for me to pass a child by," Jack continued. "And after I'd asked her a few questions I found that I was getting mightily interested in Jeanne.
"Then she began tugging at something that was fastened by a ribbon about her neck. I soon discovered it was a locket, somewhat battered to be sure, but still pretty. She proceeded to try to open this, but her chubby little fingers didn't seem equal to the task, so I did it for her.
"It held a bit of very thin paper, and on taking this out I found it was covered with writing, in French of course, and done with a lead pencil at that. Slowly I managed to make out what the letter said, for it was a letter, Tom, meant especially for me, simply because I had been, by chance, the one to stop and speak to the child.
"Listen now, Tom, and I'll read you what is written here on the paper, just as I managed to translate it. And be ready to hold your breath, too, because there's something of a real thrill connected with it."
"Shoot!" was all Tom said in reply.
CHAPTER IV
THE STORY OF THE LORRAINE WAIF
JACK had taken the locket in question out of his coat-pocket and opened it, extracting the folded paper it contained. This latter he smoothed out, for it was a mass of creases, from having been crushed into so small a receptacle.
"'To the kind friend who finds my child,' it starts," said Jack impressively. "'Her name is Jeanne Anstey. I am her wretched and dying mother, dying for my beloved France. It is the Boche who has done this. They came at daylight, and burned the poor cottage in which we have been making our home.
"'That terrible man was here with them as before, mounted on his horse, and with all his trappings.
His name it is Anton von Berthold, and he is my half-brother. To my face he boasted, knowing that I was surely dying, that through Helene he meant some day to claim our estate in Lorraine, where there are deposits of iron that will be worth millions of francs yearly.
"'I believe he has long plotted to get hold of this property, and schemed to secure his ends through one of my poor children. Oh! if you have a heart, my friend, I pray you by all you hold sacred to see that my Jeanne is cared for; and, if it be possible, try to save my poor Helene from that monster.
"'This is the plea of a dying Frenchwoman. I have faith to believe Heaven will not desert the innocent in their hour of suffering. So I lay me down to rest, while my Jeanne will go forth in search of you, kind friend. And with my last breath I still proudly say, "_Vive la France!_"'"
"Is that all?" asked Tom, as his chum stopped.
"Yes, and there are some of the words blurred. I think it must have been through the tears of this poor woman. She seems to have been wealthy before the Huns drove her out of Lorraine because she had French blood in her veins, and was probably married to an Englishman. What do you think of it, Tom?"