"Tom," said Roscoe, "I was a fool again, just like I was before, back home in America. Will you try to forget it, old man?" he added. "There ain't anything to forget," said Tom, "I got to be thankful I found you; that's the only thing I'm thinking about and--and--that we didn't let the Germans get us. If you like a feller you don't mind about what he says. Do you think I forget you named that rifle after me? Just because--because you didn't know about trusting to the stars,--I wouldn't be mad at you----" Roscoe did not answer. CHAPTER NINETEEN TOM IS QUESTIONED When it became known in the captured village (as it did immediately) that the tall prisoner whom Tom Slade had brought in, was none other than the famous Major Johann Slauberstrauffn von Piffinhoeffer, excitement ran high in the neighborhood, and the towheaded young dispatch-rider from the Toul sector was hardly less of a celebrity than the terrible Prussian himself. "Paul Revere" and his compass became the subjects of much mirth, touched, as usual, with a kind of bantering evidence of genuine liking. In face of all this, Tom bestowed all the credit on Roscoe (it would be hard to say why), and on Archibald Archer and the Big Dipper. "Now that we've got the Big Dipper with us we ought to be able to push right through to Berlin," observed one young corporal. "They say Edison's got some new kind of a wrinkle up his sleeve, but believe me, if he's got anything to beat Paul Revere's compass, he's a winner!" "Old Piff nearly threw a fit, I heard, when he found out that he was captured by a kid in the messenger service," another added. "They may pull a big stroke with Mars, the god of war," still another said, "but we've got the Big Dipper on our side." Indeed, some of them nicknamed Tom the Big Dipper, but he did not mind for, as he said soberly, he had "always liked the Big Dipper, anyway." As the next day passed the importance of Tom's coup became known among the troops stationed in the village and was the prime topic with those who were digging the new trench line northeast of the town. Indeed, aside from the particular reasons which were presently to appear, the capture of Major von Piffinhoeffer was a "stunt" of the first order which proved particularly humiliating to German dignity. That he should have been captured at all was remarkable. That he should have been hoodwinked and brought in by a young dispatch-rider was a matter of crushing mortification to him, and must have been no less so to the German high command.