"No, thanks, I won't smoke," said the boy, and, sitting down on a billet of wood, he laid the paper on his knee. "DEAR PATER," he wrote with a steady hand. "It seems a rotten thing to have to tell you, but the French are going to shoot me for a spy. The fool man in command here, who was probably a successful pork butcher before the war started, declines to communicate with headquarters, and I rather hope you'll rub it into him when you learn all. It seems I speak German too well, and I should not be surprised if the sham English 'brass hat' who upset them last night were that scoundrel, Van Drissel, whom I nearly shot." He got thus far, the Alsatian corporal standing rigidly at his elbow, when he became aware of a bustle at the table, and looked up. A French _liaison_ officer had just arrived, and was explaining his mission to the group, while the commandant read a dispatch he had brought. Dennis sprang to his feet, and the laugh which brought the corporal's grip on to his collar again turned every eye towards him. "Good morning, mon Capitaine!" he cried. "Will you be good enough to tell the commandant the circumstances under which we met last night, and why I came to your headquarters with a message?" "My dear lieutenant," said the _liaison_ officer. "Enchanted to meet you again! But what in the name of heaven has happened to you?" "Nothing to what was going to happen in a few minutes if you had not arrived," replied Dennis, unable to repress the triumph he felt at the consternation in the faces of his judges. "_Ciel_, mon Commandant!" exclaimed the _liaison_ officer. "It is a very fortunate thing for you that I came in time. If you had shot this young Englishman, Father Joffre would have had something to say about it." In a few words he established the prisoner's identity beyond any shadow of doubt, and the good-hearted fellows were round him in a moment, clamouring out their apologies, while the commandant, with tears rolling into his beard, kissed him on both cheeks. Dennis was ashamed that he had called him a pork butcher, for the poor man was pathetically apologetic, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of what might have been. "You certainly gave me a very tight squeeze for the moment," laughed the lad. "But it was a string of extraordinary coincidences that might have deceived anyone." "Then our general's reply has not reached your headquarters?" queried the _liaison_ officer. "Unhappily not," said Dennis. "It is somewhere among the wreckage of the car and the remains of those two poor fellows."