"Poleetically and in a military sense the 'Sausage-Killer' is dead," said Tam; "as a human being he is still alive, being detained during his Majesty's displeasure." "You will tell me the rest, won't you?" she pleaded. With her, Tam invariably ended his romances at the point where they could only be continued by the relation of his own prowess, "and I'm glad you brought him down--it makes me shudder to see the balloons burning. Oh, and do you know they bombed Number One-Three-One last night?" "Ye don't say!" There was amazement in his look, but there was pain, too. The traditions of the air service had become his traditions. A breach of the unwritten code by the enemy was almost as painful a matter to him as though it was committed by one of his own comrades. For his spiritual growth had dated from the hour of his enlistment, and that period of life wherein youth absorbs its most vivid and most eradicable impressions, had coincided with the two years he had spent in his new environment. He understood nothing of the army and its intimate life, of its fierce and wholesome code. He could only wonder at the courage and the endurance of those men on the ground who were cheerful in all circumstances. They amazed and in a sense depressed him. He had been horrified to see snipers bayoneted without mercy, without being given a chance to surrender, not realizing that the sniper is outside all concession and can not claim any of the rough courtesies of war. He had placed his enemy on a pedestal, and it hurt almost as much to know that the German fell short of his conception as it would have, had one of his own comrades been guilty of an unpermissible act. Hospitals had been bombed before, but there was a chance that the wandering night-bird had dropped his pills in ignorance of what lay beneath him. Of late, however, hospitals and clearing stations had been attacked with such persistence that there was very little doubt that the enemy was deliberately carrying out a hideous plan. "Ye don't say?" he repeated, and the girl noticed that his voice was a little husky. "Were ye--" he hesitated. "I was on convoy duty, fortunately," said the girl, "but that doesn't save you in the daytime, and I have been bombed lots of times, although the red cross on the top of the ambulance is quite clear--isn't it?" Tam nodded. "There was no damage?" he asked anxiously. "Not very much in one way," she said, "he missed the hospital but got the surgery and poor Hector--" She stopped, and he saw tears in her eyes. "Ye don't tell me?" he asked, startled. She nodded. "Puir Hector; well, that's too bad, puir wee little feller!" "Everybody is awfully upset about it, he was such a cheery little chap. He was killed quite--nastily." She hesitated to give the grisly details, but Tam, who had seen the effect of high explosive bombs, had no difficulty in reconstructing the scene where Hector laid down his life for his adopted country.