Luckily their plane was not hit or in danger from the occasional shells that still came screaming over the lines across the scraggy war-torn land over which they flew. Stanley, though very weak, was still alive. Loss of blood was the main cause of his weakness. Upon recovering from his first state of coma, after sustaining his injury, he had borne the long, wearisome ride, the spatter and peril of conflict without complaint. At Appincourte Bluff, where was now a base hospital, he was taken from the plane and put under adequate medical care. For twenty-four hours he dozed and slowly strengthened; but when be finally waked again to life and its daily events, there was Miss Daskam's fair young face at his bedside. Needless to state that Stanley's recovery was rapid under these auspices. Meantime Blaine and Bangs made their further, way in the plane over the few miles intervening between the hospital and the aerodrome. Most of the boys were away, scattered along the now advancing front but by night some of them began to straggle back. Poor Finzer and Brodno would never come back. That both Lafe and his companion well knew. But they had died like true men, fighting for the cause they believed in. Captain Byers was also at the front, now many miles to the east. But the veteran Sergeant Anson was on hand and in partial charge. He it was who brought to the boys some sealed envelopes, saying: "You chaps have been gone a goodish while. And you've managed to lose one bully scouting plane. But I guess you've done your bit all right." "Well, sergeant," remarked Blaine quizzically, "I don't know what you'd call doing our bit. Buck here has brought down, with my help at times, several Boche planes. I managed to knock spots out of a troop and ammunition train or rather two of them. Better than all, we helped bring down another plane with two Huns in it, one dead, another dying. Guess who the last one was?" Anson grinned, frowned, then shook his head. "Bother the guessin'! I ain't as bally good at that as you Yanks. Was it any one we knows?" "You remember Bauer?" "That rotter what was found guilty of spyin' for the enemy? Yes, I knew the blighter, the traitor?" "Well, he's dead. When his plane fell on fire, I had to drop down in a shell-hole back yonder. Bauer and his pilot had fallen near there just before. He was cussing us all out, Boche fashion. But it was from their machine that I got enough petrol to fetch us three safely back. So you see Bauer was some good after all. Of course he was a traitor and should have been hung." "Well, you two haven't done so bad. Before Senator Walsen and his daughters left they gave me these things for you two, if you had the luck to get back. And Captain Byers, before going on this raid, left this permit, together with all necessary papers for you two to go on leave for ten days."