“Oh! young M’sieu, what can we say to thank you?” burst out the old peasant, while his good wife nodded vehemently to show that in her mind she echoed all her “good man” said. “The best that ever could happen has come to us. Jean has seen a great light. He has won the great victory over himself. Yes, he signalled to me to let him come up, and then and there he swore that he would go straight back to his place in the fighting line, and die a dozen deaths before quitting again. We are so happy! Now we can look our friends and neighbors in the face without feeling a cold hand at our hearts. Jean may live to see us again; but if he should not surely the Good Father above will console us if we knew that he died for the king!” Amos had to furtively rub his eyes as though some mote had suddenly blown in there; even Jack felt his own vision a little obscured as he pressed the hands of the relieved old people, who no longer held their heads down in shame. “Come,” said Jack, cheerily, “let’s have a bite and then we must leave you, François.” CHAPTER XXI. BOMBARDED BY A ZEPPELIN. Shortly afterwards the two boys said good-bye to their host and his wife, and started out to find headquarters in Ypres. They quickly discovered that the badly battered town was full of marching soldiers, and all the other things that go hand in hand with modern war, even to a number of armored cars which sped past them on the road, exciting the wonder of Amos greatly. “Why, just see how they’ve managed to build up that metal shield around the men aboard, Jack! They seem to be safe from ordinary bullets fired by a machine gun. There were two Maxims aboard that last car, I noticed.” “Yes,” added the other, deeply interested, “fighting today begins to take on some of the old-time ways. You’d almost think of Roman chariots to see those cars flying along the road, only the galloping horses have been displaced by a power a hundred times more powerful. But there must have been some pretty warm engagements around this town, if the battered walls can tell the story.” “Huh! it doesn’t look to me worth the powder that’s been wasted,” remarked Amos. “Why should both Germans and the Allies want to get and hold possession of Ypres, I’d like to know? Thousands must have fallen here, because everywhere you look you see those mounds where the dead have been buried.” “They consider it a place of strategic importance, which is the only explanation I can give you,” Jack observed. “Perhaps it’s what we’d call a railway center over in the States. Then the only good road leading to Dunkirk and the Channel runs out from Ypres; and you know the Kaiser is dead set on getting his army where he can throw those shells over on to the shore of England. That mania with him has cost pretty much all this terrible slaughter.”