"It strikes me Allan's a pretty long time coming with those letters, Thad." "Oh perhaps he's struck some exciting news worth picking up; you know he's a correspondent for a newspaper at home in the good old United States, and must always be on the lookout for happenings. Have a little more patience, Bumpus." "But you see I didn't sleep ten winks last night, Thad. After our lovely quiet trip down the Rhine by boat from Mainz this place seemed just as noisy as any boiler factory." "No wonder, Bumpus, with trains pouring in from the east and north, every one loaded down with German first-line troops, field artillery, cavalry horses, aeroplane supplies, and all sorts of war toggery." "Yes, but, Giraffe, I took notice that you slept like a top through it all, just as if we were camping again in the Maine woods, or down in that Louisiana swamp where we had such a roaring good time." The boy who answered to the peculiar nick-name of "Giraffe" laughed when the stout, auburnhaired member of the trio, known as Bumpus Hawtree, made this assertion