“We’ll be lying in wait for Randolph, all right!” laughed Beverly.  “And what a surprise it’ll be!  The man must think he’s dreaming, having left you over in France, Jack, on the fighting front when he sailed, with not one chance in a thousand that you could catch even the next boat, days later, and then finding you here ahead of him!”

The prospect pleased them all so much that they made light of the merciless jostling received in that springless wagon over wretched Virginia shore roads.  In fact, they were so elated over the great success that had rewarded their daring venture that it seemed just then as if nothing could ever again make them feel blue, or depressed in spirits.

In due time the lonely little station was reached.  It was then two in the afternoon of that eventful day.  Just as Tom anticipated, it turned out that there would not be a train in the direction they wished to go for two hours and more.  This train would drop them at another station where a connection was made with the road that ran through Bridgeton.

It was lucky they found themselves in no hurry, thanks, as Jack naively remarked, to their having come across “on the air-line limited.”

The time dragged to Jack, naturally, but he felt he had no reason for complaint after such wonderful good fortune.  At last their train came along.  What if it was ten minutes late?  That would only shorten their wait at the junction.

“So long as we reach the old town by nine tonight I’ll be satisfied,” Jack had bravely committed himself by saying; and indeed it was just about then they did jump from the steps of the car at Bridgeton, for the second train had been two hours late.

Nevertheless all of them were united in thinking they had made a swift trip from the American sector of the fighting front in France to the town of Bridgeton in the Old Dominion in just four complete days.

Jack led the way, though, of course, Tom would have been just as competent a guide, since this was also his home town.

How those blinking lights in the well-remembered windows of the Parmly home held Jack’s eyes, once he sighted them!  Never before in all his life had he felt such a delicious thrill creep over him from head to toe.

Knocking on the door he and his chums carried out their pre-arranged plan.  Jack and Tom were to keep back out of sight, leaving Lieutenant Beverly to break the glorious news first and prepare the family, so there might not be so loud an outcry as to arouse the neighbors and breed the excitement in the community that neither of the returned fighters wished.

Jack’s aunt, who, a widow herself, made her home with her widowed sister-in-law, came to the door, for some reason or other.  Perhaps the negro servants still went home at night, as had been the case before Jack went to the war.  She looked surprised and anxious as soon as she saw that the caller was a stranger, and evidently an aviator from his dress.