He had proven his usefulness in war long ago--in the Franco-Prussian war. It was at the time when Paris was cut off from the rest of the world, that fanciers in the French capital went to the authorities and explained that if the birds were sent to Tours in balloons they would return with whatever news was entrusted to them. Accordingly, more than eight hundred homing pigeons sailed as captives out over the fortifications and as certainly returned with information--so much and in such detail that Parisians have since declared that put into book form would have made at least 500 volumes. By a process of micro-photography the equivalent of a sixteen-page newspaper was reproduced on a film which was inserted in a quill and fastened to the middle-tail feather of the bird. These films were thrown on a screen through a lantern that magnified them, just as moving picture films are now shown. Belgium from that date took the training of these birds and it was from this little country that most of them were purchased and there they had been most largely bred at the outbreak of the war and Belgian trainers have been busy in the training of them ever since for the Allies. Through the lighted window I saw the girl in closest conversation with a man of peasant type. They were going over a small bundle of papers on a roughly hewn table with the lamp between them. There was just the rudest furnishing for habitation in the room that had been the kitchen of the house. They were so interested in the papers that it was obvious the opportunity was as good as any I could expect to take them by surprise. So I stole away from the window and to the back door of the house which opened directly into this room. I managed to open the door without alarming them, but was so intently keeping my eyes on them as I crept into the room, that I stumbled over a loose brick in the floor of the shell-shaken house. Man and girl leaped to their feet. He lost no time reaching under his blouse for a pistol. But here I had him clearly at a disadvantage. My own automatic was already in my hand. I shot him straight between the eyes. The girl shrieked and started toward me in fury. She had no weapon so I thrust my revolver into my holster and grappled with her. She fought vixenishly for a few minutes, but then suddenly relaxed in my arms and began violently sobbing. After that she very quietly accompanied me to battalion headquarters. Once over her fit of fury, she made no pretense that she had been other than a spy in our camp. But she said the man had compelled her to do this work. She was a native of Belgium, but of mixed Flemish and German parentage. She said the man was a German, she had known him to be all the while, but said she loved him and that it was only her love that had persuaded her to act as informant for him. Now that he was dead, she said she did not care what became of her, what punishment was given her.