"Perhaps I flatter myself, but then I suppose you have had no chance to keep up on American affairs." Just then a crash, followed by a whirring, clattering noise broke in above the sound of the man's voice and the gurgle of the brook running through their hiding-place. "What's that?" Winslow exclaimed, starting towards the end of the culvert. [Illustration: She was washing her woven grass sandals by rubbing the soles together in the stream.] Ethel followed him. Before they reached the open the trees in front of them were lit up by the lurid light of a fire. Beside the road a hundred yards away was the crumpled mass of a metallic aeroplane. The gasolene tank had burst open and was blazing furiously. "Americans," said Winslow; "let's see if the crew are dead." The gasolene had largely spent itself by the time they reached the plane. Poking about in the crumbled debris, they found the driver impaled upon a lever that protruded from his back. "I wonder what grounded her," mused Winslow, as he inspected the dead man with his flash-lamp. "Oh! here we are! Good shooting that," he added, pointing with his lamp to a soggy hole in the side of the man's head. "I guess they're at it," he said, pressing out his light and turning his eyes skyward. The woman, speechless, followed his gaze. Across the sky flashed here and there brilliant beams of search-lights, but far more numerous were the swiftly moving star-like tail-lights of the Japanese planes. Now and again they heard the crackling of machine guns, occasionally the burr of a disordered propeller and once the faint call of a human voice. "Look," said Ethel, pointing to the southward. "See that brilliant yellow light. It's the Japanese signal plane; they are all to fly in towards it, and then, soaring high will escape over the American lines." "The lines are a joke," returned Winslow. "It's plane against plane. And the Japs will get the best of it; or at least they'll get away, which is all they want. They are going to Dakota, where five train loads of gasolene will be setting on a siding waiting to be captured. We printed the story ten days ago, though the administration papers hooted at the idea." As they walked back toward the culvert, Ethel stumbled over something in the roadway. She asked for the light, and discovered to her horror that she was standing in the midst of the remnants of a man who had been spattered over the hard macadam of the turnpike. "Ugh! take me away," she shuddered, averting her eyes and running toward the stream, "The gunner fell out of the plane when she lurched, I guess," commented Winslow to himself, examining the shreds of clothing attached to the mangled remains beneath him. For some reason Winslow did not immediately follow the girl but went back and looked over the wrecked plane again. He removed the magazine pistol from the impaled man's pocket and searched about in the locker until he found a supply of cartridges.