“I say,” said a handsome fair young man at last, “would you mind telling us, old chap, where you come from?”

John continued to stretch his muscles and took several long and deep breaths.  After the delay he turned to the fair young man and said: 

“Beg pardon, but did you speak to me?”

The Englishman flushed a little and pulled at his yellow mustache.  An older man said: 

“Don’t press His Highness, Lord James.  Don’t you see that he’s an American and therefore privileged?”

“I’m privileged,” said John, “because I was with you fellows from Belgium to Paris, and since then I’ve been away saving you from the Germans.”

Lord James laughed.  He had a fine face and all embarrassment disappeared from it.

“We want to be friends,” he said.  “Shake hands.”

John shook.  He also shook the hand of the older man and several others.  Then he explained who he was, and told who had come with him, none less than the famous young French aviator, Philip Lannes.

“Lannes,” said Mr. Yellow Mustache, who, John soon learned, was Lord James Ivor.  “Why, we’ve all heard of him.  He’s come to the chief with messages a half-dozen times since this battle began, and I judge from the way he rushed to him just now that he has another, that can’t be delayed.”

“I think so, too,” said John, “although I don’t know anything about it myself.  He’s a close-mouthed fellow.  But do any of you happen to have heard of an Englishman, Carstairs, and an American, Wharton, who belong to a company called the Strangers in the French army, but who must be at present with you—­that is, if they’re alive?”

John’s voice dropped a little, as he added the last words, but Lord James Ivor walked to the brow of a low hill, called to somebody beyond, and then walked back.

“It’s a happy chance that I can tell you what you want to know,” he said.  “Those two men have been serving in my own company, and they’re both alive and well.  But they were lying on the grass there, dead to the world, that is, sleeping, as if they were two of the original seven sleepers.”

Two figures appeared on the brow of the hill, gazed at first in a puzzled manner at John and then, uttering shouts of welcome, rushed toward him.  Carstairs seized him by one hand and Wharton by the other.

“Not killed, I see,” said Carstairs.

“Nor is he going to be killed,” said Wharton.

“Now, where have you been?” asked Carstairs.

“Yes, where have you been?” asked Wharton.

“I’ve been taking a couple of pleasure trips with my friend, Lannes,” replied John.  “Between trips I was a prisoner of the Germans, and I’ve seen a lot of the great battle.  Has the British army suffered much?”

A shade flitted over the face of Carstairs as he replied: