The old man heard his footsteps, looked up, and raised his feeble voice in a quavering shout. There was no time for a second. The soldier hurled himself upon the aged peasant, felled him with one blow, sprang to one of the bicycles, started the engine, ran the machine a few yards and leapt into the saddle. With every jolt as the bicycle gained speed on the rough track his heart grew more elate. Whither the track led he neither knew nor cared; his whole soul was in the present. Right and left of him were the trees. He had ridden perhaps thirty yards when, from the right, a khaki-clad figure dashed into the track just ahead. The fugitive increased his speed and rode straight on. If the man stood in his way, so much the worse for him. Then, in a moment, Atropos cut the thread. As the bicycle was whizzing by, the man flung himself bodily upon it. There was a crash, a thud, then silence. A few minutes later, Kenneth and Harry came hurrying to the scene. "Is he killed?" asked the latter, as Kenneth stooped over the body lying on the machine. "No, he’s alive," replied Kenneth, after thrusting his hand into the man’s tunic. He unscrewed the stopper of his flask, and poured weak spirit into the unconscious man’s mouth. Not until Ginger had recovered consciousness did they turn their attention to the other man, whose case, indeed, they had recognised at the first glance as hopeless. When he was hurled from the machine, his head had struck a tree trunk on the opposite side of the track. Stoneway was dead. Yet he had survived his partners. Perhaps half-an-hour before, Obernai and the rest of the gang, after a drumhead court-martial, had paid the last penalty. Spying, at the best, is ignoble work; and when it is accompanied, as in Obernai’s case, with the treacherous abuse of hospitality and the betrayal of trusting folk, the spy’s doom awakens no sympathy. CHAPTER XXII "RECOMMENDED" "A fig for reasons!" exclaimed Madame Bonnard. "We women can do without them. Monsieur Amory will bear me witness; I said that wretch Obernai was a villain." "Pardon, mon amie," said her good man, mildly: "you said you did not like his voice." "Well, was not that enough? I did not like his voice: therefore he was a villain. It is plain." "The Kaiser is said to have a very pleasant voice," remarked Kenneth, slily. He was sitting in the Bonnards’ kitchen, awaiting the return of his comrades for supper. "I should like to ask his wife what she thinks of it," said Madame Bonnard. "Poor woman! what a terrible thing it will be for her when she goes with him into banishment, and she has to listen to him all day long!" "Think you they will banish him, monsieur?" asked Bonnard. "Who can tell?" Kenneth replied. "We have got to catch him first."