"What did I tell you, fellows," cried Frank delightedly. "Didn't I say the old boy'd be coming in some morning and asking us if breakfast was ready?" Tom was giving Frank the long-lost letter he had been carrying when Corporal Wilson came up with the relief and their greeting was almost as boisterous and hilarious as that of his own particular chums had been, for Tom was a universal favorite in the regiment, and they had all mourned his loss. They would have overwhelmed him with questions, but Frank interposed. "Nothing doing, fellows," he said. "This boy isn't going to say another word until we've taken him to mess and filled him up till he can't move. After that there'll be plenty of time for a talk and we'll keep him talking till the cows come home." It was a rejoicing crowd that took Tom back to the main body of the regiment, where he almost had his hands wrung from him. They piled his plate and filled his coffee cup again and again and watched him while he ate like a famished wolf. "Tom's running true to form," joked Frank, as they saw the food vanish before his onslaught. "Whatever else the Huns took away from him, they left him his appetite," chuckled Billy. "Left it?" grinned Tom, as he attacked another helping. "They added to it. I never knew what hunger was before. Bring on anything you've got, and I'll tackle it. All except fish. I'm ashamed now to look a fish in the face." It was a long time before he had had enough. Then with a look of seraphic contentment on his face he sat back, loosened his belt a notch, and sighed with perfect happiness. "Now fellows, fire away," he grinned, "and I'll tell you the sad story of my life." They needed no second invitation, for they had been fairly bursting with eagerness and curiosity. Questions rained on him thick and fast. Their fists clenched when he told them of the cruelties to which he had been subjected. They were loud in admiration of the way in which he had met and overcome his difficulties. They roared with laughter when he told them of the alarm clock, and Tom himself, to whom it had been no joke at the time, laughed now as heartily as the rest. "So that's the way you got those ropes gnawed through when you were at the farmhouse," exclaimed Frank, when Tom told them of the aid that had come to him from the rats. "We figured out everything else but that. We thought that you must have frayed them against a piece of glass." "I used to hate rats," said Tom, "but I don't now. I'll never have a trap set in any house of mine as long as I live." "If you'd only known how safe it would have been to walk downstairs that day!" mourned Frank. "Wouldn't it have been bully?" agreed Tom. "Think of the satisfaction it would have been to have had the bulge on that lieutenant who was going to hang me. I wouldn't have done a thing to him!" "Well, we got him anyway and that's one comfort," remarked Bart.