Two nights later they were all seated about the fire in the Hideout. Their new home was small but not too crowded for company. Young Lord Applegate and two of his flying buddies were there. Beside the Lord, whom Dave had met some days before, there was a flyer they had nicknamed Fiddlin’ Johnny. Johnny was slender, fair-haired and dreamy-eyed. “Just the sort that doesn’t seem to belong in the air,” Applegate had said to Dave. “But he’s got a real record. You’d be surprised.” “Give us a tune, Johnny,” Brand urged, as Alice’s tea warmed their souls. “Oh, all right!” Johnny rose awkwardly. “I’m not much of a fiddler, but anything to please.” After blowing on a strange little pipe, he tuned his violin, then was away to a good start. The moment his bow slid across the strings Cherry knew they were in for a rare treat. Paying little attention to his audience nor even to their applause, Johnny launched into a series of quaint, melodious, old tunes. Like a slow-flowing river he drifted from one to another and yet another. All unconscious of those about him, he played on and on. He appeared to play not for them but for the few birds lingering among bare branches of wind-lashed trees outside, or perhaps to the angels in heaven. “Oh!” Cherry breathed, when at last he returned his violin to its battered case. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She turned to the young Lord. “Why didn’t you bring him to one of our subway songfests?” “Johnny!” The young Lord laughed. “He’d never remember when to stop.” “Stop!” the girl exclaimed in her hoarse whisper. “Who would want him to stop? That—why that was divine.” “Oh! Thank you! Thank you!” Johnny’s face flushed. “He’s just the same when he’s in the air fighting,” said the young Lord. “Flies as if he were in a dream and never thinks to stop. He—” Suddenly he broke off. Someone had turned on the short-wave radio. It was low. Reaching over, he turned it louder. “Get an earful of this.” His lips were curled in scorn. The man on the radio was saying in fairly good English, “The quality of the British fighters is laughable.” “How do you mean?” a voice on the radio asked. “That’s Helmuth Wick, the boasting Hun,” the young Lord whispered. “They merely try to stay out of our reach, those English fighters,” said the boasting German pilot. “This shows that the best English pilots have already been shot down. They fire furiously but never hit anything. It must make them very annoyed.” “Well, thank you, Major Wick,” said the interviewer on the air. “That’s all we have had time for now. Nice to have had you with us.” “That broadcast is for America,” the young Lord explained. “It _is_ nice they had him with them tonight. He won’t be with them long. We’re all after him. No one loves a boaster. Besides, he’s a dirty fighter.”