Watching every move that his quarry made, Tom stalked him as noiselessly as an American woodsman would follow a wary animal’s trail. He noticed as the Boche went along on the ground, he seemed to draw himself forward with only the right arm, the other hanging limp at his side. A little further on Tom found the faint pathway spotted with blood. He crept closer. As he did so he inadvertently stuck one of his own hands into a smouldering pile of leaves which had been set afire by a bomb or shell, and the exclamation that escaped him made it impossible longer to keep his presence there unknown. The German turned quickly. Tom noted all in one glance that he wore a fierce bristly mustache turned up at the ends after the style of Wilhelm, the Arch-Murderer, that his complexion now was a greenish-white, and that his left arm had been shot completely off just below the elbow. But he noted something more than that, even while he covered the man with his gun, and the latter stuck his right hand into the air in token of surrender. The man was a colonel in the Prussian Guards! A regimental commander in what the Kaiser himself regarded as his crack troops! Tom gasped in astonishment. Seeing that the other made no move to get his own weapon, the younger man lowered his rifle the least bit, at the same time rose, first to his knees and then to his feet, and then commanded the German officer to stand up. “But keep that arm in the air, Colonel,” he cautioned vigorously, “or I might get nervous and pull this trigger.” Apparently the officer understood, and maybe, too, he had some sense of humor, for he not only did as Tom bade him to do, but the features, that were distorted with the torture of pain and fast ebbing strength, for an instant were softened by just the flicker of a smile. “You seem to be just a little more decent than the rest, anyway,” Tom continued, “and that arm needs attention pretty badly. I’ll let that machine gun nest go for a few moments while I turn you over to be taken back a prisoner, and for treatment.” “I thank you very much for sparing my life and giving me this attention,” the German colonel responded, in almost perfect English. “You are very kind.” As Tom fell in behind him, after having directed him which way to walk, he began to marvel over the man’s accent, and in a guarded way to admire the manner in which he bore what must have been the agonizing pain of his injury. They had almost reached the point where Tom could turn his prisoner over to those who would take him in charge and transfer him to the rear and to a hospital, when they came upon George Harper, propped up against a tree, apparently asleep. But as he heard them approach he opened his eyes, and then he did what to Tom seemed a strange and unaccountable thing. He jumped to his feet, showing no evidence of a wound or other injury, and then, gazing intently into the face of Tom’s high-ranking prisoner, took a few more steps forward.