"To think that you were legging it away from the house just as we were coming toward it," said Billy. "It was the toughest kind of luck," admitted Tom. "Yet perhaps it was all for the best, for then I might not have had the chance to get the best of Rabig." "Rabig?" exclaimed Frank, for the traitor had not yet been mentioned in Tom's narrative. "What about him?" questioned Billy eagerly. "Hold your horses," grinned Tom. "I'll get to him in good time. If it hadn't been for Rabig I wouldn't be here. I owe that much to the skunk, anyway." It was hard for them to wait, but they were fully rewarded when Tom described the way in which he had trapped and stripped the renegade, and left him lying in the woods. "Bully boy!" exclaimed Frank. "That was the very best day's work you ever did." "Got the goods on him at last," exulted Bart. "The only man in the old Thirty-seventh that has played the yellow dog," commented Billy. "The regiment's well rid of him. He'll never dare to show his face again." "He can fight for Germany now," said Frank, "and if he does, I only hope that some day I'll run across him in the fighting." "You won't if he sees you first," grinned Billy. "He doesn't want any of your game." Tom had left one thing till the last. "By the way, Frank," he remarked casually, "I ran across a fellow in the German prison camp who came from Auvergne, the same province where you've told me your mother lived when she was a girl. He said he knew her family well." "Is that so?" asked Frank with quick interest. "What was his name?" "Martel," replied Tom. "Why that's the name of the butler who used to be in my mother's family!" cried Frank. "Colonel Pavet was telling me that he had been captured, and had died in prison. I was hoping that he was mistaken in that, for the colonel said he had information that might help my mother to get her property." "The colonel is right about the man's dying," replied Tom, "for I was with him when he died." "It's too bad," said Frank dejectedly. "I shouldn't wonder if he did not know something," said Tom, "for he seemed to have something on his mind. He told me one time that his imprisonment and sickness happened as a judgment on him." "If we could only have had his testimony before he died," mourned Frank. "I got it," declared Tom triumphantly. CHAPTER XXIII CUTTING THEIR WAY OUT Frank sprang to his feet. "What do you mean?" he cried. "Just this," replied Tom, taking the confession from his pocket. "He told me the whole story and there it is in black and white, names of witnesses and all." Frank read the confession with growing excitement, while his comrades clustered closely around him. "Tom, old scout!" Frank exclaimed, as the whole significance of the confession dawned upon him, "you've done me a service that I'll never forget. Now we can see our way clear, and my mother will come into her rights."