saw two armies in the selfsame street, one dirty and bedraggled and with thinned ranks, the other fresh and with the light of eager quest in its eyes. One was marching south while the other was marching north. One was from Yorkshire in old England and the other was from America. Ah, it was a sight to turn stone into tears when the tall, sinewy lads from the western hemisphere halted just where the avenue faces the Madeleine, and cheered those weary heroes marching back from hell.

Paris is far behind me as I write, but the soldiers who shouted their admiration for the wounds of a thousand convalescent "Tommies" bound for "Blighty" are with me. God only knows how many of those far-called heroes will be marching down that glorious way of Paris when the battalion musters out for home. They are now where civilization has reared her altars, where democracy has found her Gethsemane. But this we all know: they will "carry on."

Chapter III
DOWN IN FLAMES

"The Boche is coming back," a man yelled into the entrance of the cellar. A second later I was above ground and with my head at the sky-scraper angle. There he was! Like a great homing pigeon he was streaking it for his own lines after an observation-flight far behind ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide the telltale crosses on the under side of his wings, and the churn of his engine was unmistakable.

When my eyes brought him into focus, he was at least a mile away, but in half a minute he was directly overhead. The guns were roaring all about; shrapnel bursts surrounded the pirate bird. Ah! that one broke near! For just an instant he faltered, but on he came.

I stepped into the doorway of an old shattered stone house to find cover from the falling shrapnel and stray pieces of shell. The Boche was flying as the eagle flies when his objective has anchored his eye; he turned neither to the right nor to the left. He quickly and constantly changed his elevation, however; but the batteries were doing splendidly, and that he escaped destruction is a miracle. Two minutes more, and he was out of hearing and virtually safe.

There was a chorus of disgust; strong words in lurid splashes filled the air. Particularly fluent were the men when they passed comment upon the French fliers.

"Where are they?" they inquired in derision.

"Taking in the side-shows on the Milky Way!" one husky volunteers.

Another added: "Always the same story, 'No speed, no pep.' 'Dutchmen come and Dutchmen go, but we stay down forever.' They'll come along presently like blind pigs looking for an acorn."

I knew the symptoms, and spared any comment. It had been noticeable, however, that the German airmen, on our sector at least, commanded swifter scout-planes than we did. In straightaway bursts they left our French brothers at the post. At the time of this particular incident only a few Americans were flying, and these were associated with French aviators, and were using French machines.

Sure enough, two minutes more brought the "silver queens," as the boys called them, although the name "silver queen" really belongs to the great British aluminum dirigibles. There were three of them, and the sunlight flashing upon their white pinions was a gallant sight. These "queens" are hard to follow because of their color, and we kept them located by the angry buzzing of their motors—an altogether different sound from that given out by the visitor from Germany—and by the light flashing from their wings. They were like angry hornets that had been disturbed early in the morning and were now furiously looking for their tormentor. The men continued to "grouse," but their tones indicated expectancy.

In the meantime all was quiet across the way, and our guns had been silent ever since the elusive foe roared out of range. The Frenchmen were circling high above us. Suddenly and with something of a shock I noticed that the circle was widening, that each new circumference was nearer the enemy's lines. Our airmen were inviting battle. They were prepared to go clear across to get it, and were challenging the foe to come out, or rather up. He was not eager. Indeed, I never saw him when he was. Perhaps his orders do not allow of the initiative that the Allies possess; but German airmen, as a class, rather than German aëroplanes, are inferior to those who so often hurl to them, without acceptance, the gage of battle.

Our little fleet was well "over" and drawing anti-aircraft fire before its invitation was acknowledged. Then up they came, five in all; and the deadly tourney was on. In spite of the odds, not an inch did the "silver queens" recede. The conflict was so far away that its fine details were lost to us; we could not distinguish the sound of the machine guns in the air from those in the front-line trenches below us, and only the sunlight flashing on the silver wings told that "our flag was still there."

It was a swirling vortex of currents that held to no fixed course. The war-birds swooped and climbed; puffs of smoke and streaks of fire marked their way. A dozen times machines seemed to collide; a dozen times we saw planes plunge as if to destruction, only to right themselves and return to the fray. Out of a nose-dive one Frenchman came when so near the ground that I had closed my eyes to avoid seeing the crash. A score of times men looped the loop and "tumbled." But not an inch did those Frenchmen give! And listen to these "grousers" now!—

"Come back! Come back! They'll not come back unless five more get up, until something happens! They're hungry, man! Those Frenchies eat 'em up. They haven't had a chance like this for five days." It was five days before that eighteen planes were in battle behind our lines only two miles back. In this affair two Germans were shot down without the loss of an Allied wing. "And, when they kiss the Hun good-by this morning, he'll have blisters on his mouth."

But such struggles simply cannot long endure. This one ended far more quickly than it began. With the speed of express-trains two machines drew away from the whirlpool. Their course paralleled the lines. We saw the "silver queen" on the tail of the Taube. Bitterly the German fought to outposition his rival, but his pursuer anticipated his every manœuvre. For once at least the German had no advantage in speed. They looped the loop together and almost as a double plane. In a second it was all over. As the warriors slid to the bottom of the great circle, the Frenchman poured a veritable stream of steel into his hapless enemy. A trail of smoke came away; then a ball of fire hung in the air; and then like a dead sun the crumpled skyship fell to the earth. The victor paused for a second above his triumph, and then flew to re-enforce his hard-pressed comrades.

We had forgotten the other six. When we looked at them again, the six were eight or ten; at the distance from which we observed them we could not be exact. But the odds were too great even for Frenchmen, and anyway they had "dined." They were not pursued beyond our advanced trenches. The Germans did not bring themselves into the range of our batteries, although they outnumbered our fliers at least two to one. As for France, three went over and three came back!

I cannot describe my feelings as I saw that German die in his burning chariot, but a flying man has described them for me. He was speaking at a patriotic meeting in western New York. Very handsome he was in the uniform of the Lafayette Escadrille, and he was very young, the youngest man ever allowed to wear that