beat him senseless with the butt of his gun before he knew I was at hand. I dragged him into the bushes, changed clothes with him, and walked up through the little town which you can see over in the hills. At this side of the town I saw a motorcycle leaning against a building, which must have been a headquarters; and I rode off on the rickety thing. Then you flew over the town at a low altitude, evidently about to land, and I made out your insignia. You may well imagine that I put on full speed, and here I am!"

His story sounded all right, and he had convinced us that he was a real American, wanting to get out of Germany as much as we did. Our problem was "gas." The major motioned for the lieutenant to approach, and asked him how much petrol

to our own lines! We poured every available drop into our tank.

Suddenly there came to our ears the sound of a rapidly driven automobile, and the three of us hurried to start the engine. The lieutenant of the -th tied himself in the space between the pilot's and observer's seats; I turned the "prop" over a few times and got her started, and then got into my place.

Just as we left the ground, the German automobile came in sight, and I could make out two German officers in the tonneau of the car. They speeded ahead, and one of them even took a pot-shot at us with his pistol. But we were out of range, soaring upward and homeward at a terrific rate of speed. We climbed to a height of about 15,000 feet, which

brought us nearly fifty miles nearer home, and, to conserve our fuel for the last lap, we started a long glide. The blank of No Man's Land at last came into view, and as our altitude was but 2000 feet, the major again switched on the gas, and we mounted to get above range of the "anti's". We were, however, able to attain but 10,000 feet, when the propeller gave a final "swish," and I knew that the petrol had given out.

Then it was that the major played our final card. We were again gliding downward, and would soon be in gun-range of the German batteries. Of à sudden, the first shrapnel passed near our tail, and I felt the gentle lift of the machine as the shell passed near by. With a forward shove of the control-stick, the major sent the ship into a downward corkscrew, and I knew that we were doing the "fallingleaf," a trick which aviators use to fake a "crash." Down and down we went, the earth seeming to reach out for us. The air rushed past us, and the wings bade fair to break off under the strain. Every wire vibrated until they resembled large transparent struts. But our manœuvre had accomplished its purpose-the Boche guns had ceased firing, the gunners evi

dently believing that we had been fatally hit by their first shrapnel.

So we dropped until the 1000 level was reached, and then the major gave the stick an almost superhuman wrench, and we straightened out for a long ride. Before the Huns could collect their wits enough to open fire once more, we had sailed over our own lines, out of danger.

We landed in a field not far back from the lines, and, as luck would have it, in an American sector. Leaving the machine to the tender mercies of a "doughboy" who had come out to meet us, we proceeded on foot to a small town near by, in which, we were informed, the Field H. Q.'s were located. The major procured an order for gasolene, and after the tank had been filled, we said good-by to the lieutenant. Then we "took off," and, with a farewell "Immelman turn," veered to the north, bound for the major's aërodrome. It was four in the afternoon when we at last arrived at our starting point, and we were received with great joy by the French personnel. I spent the remainder of the afternoon at gun trials, and at nightfall bade the major adieu, and set out for my station, arriving there on the following morning.

FOREWORD IN the August ST. NICHOLAS, Molly Hatton of the Valley was inspired to usefulness by a Lieutenant Reed. In the December number she achieved a great success for her Valley. Her habit of leadership was turned to good account in the influenza epidemic of last autumn, and this account tells how, in as exciting a race as ever girl had, she conducted herself in a perilious situation. Do you think she was worth the title that the Valley gave her, "Mobilizing Molly?"

THE hazy light of the November afternoon had ebbed from the valley, and only the distant tops of its protecting ranges still shone with the afterglow as Molly felt her way along the home road. She was weary with a long day's work in the community potato-field, and she was worried because a great loss had just stared her in the face. She had stopped in at the post-office, where the weather notices were posted, and had seen this news:

FIRST COLD WAVE OF THE SEASON DUE IN NORTHERN NEW YORK SUNDAY

A high-pressure area, with the first zero temperatures of the season, is headed this way from the Canadian Northwest, and the unusually warm fall is promised a sudden termination by the rapid progress of this cold wave. Local farmers are advised to prepare for temperatures of 10 degrees or even below.

Molly's heart had sunk at this coming realization of her fears. For it had been her fortune, or misfortune, that in her valley her word was nearly law, after the success of previous enterprises; and her word that spring had been to plant potatoes. She had a letter, at that time, from her guide and friend in France, her adored Major Reed, who hoped that she would use her influence to accumulate food-stuffs in her valley. And because she was a little vain of the amount of her influence, she had convinced every household to sow every available plot with potatoes, which were the only thing her rock-girt and win

ter-garrisoned valley dare plant. Then on the twenty-first of June, on summer's longest day, as if to show them that he held them in his hand, Old Man Winter bestowed a white frost upon the valley dwellers. From one end of the vale to the other, the home gardens and the hillside farms were frozen into one black desolation.

But this only aroused Molly's fighting blood. She assembled the heads of the valley families, now often women, and they had voted to plant again; and even more than that, to plant a great field to be called the Community Field, which would yield their common store over a thousand bushels. Into this second seeding went the valley's savings.

For a while Nature favored them. Rain and warm suns alternated to grow the tubers to largest size, and Indian summer spun out its days of waiting until, in ordinary years, all harvests would have been garnered safe from frost. But at this crisis, when every household was gathering the crop at its doors, the influenza struck. And October waned, and November swam in on days of mocking warmth, only to find the laborers in bed, and the great crop in the community field still in the earth.

For a fortnight past the change to winter had been due, but luckily postponed, and Molly, working like two men and scouring the valley for recruits, had gone from home to home, taking a hand at a sick-bed, helping with the small individual crops, but worrying over the unharvested hundreds of bushels, the loss of which would mean poverty and perhaps starvation to the valley. The plan had been hers, so hers was the responsibility if it failed. Now it had come, the certainty of her first defeat. And as she had read that notice of the cold wave, she not only dreaded the loss, she felt a sickening pain in the thought that her major would hear of her defeat. It was no wonder that she

That last idea was worst of all. How could she bear to see him, herself beaten!

In her dejection she almost bumped into a little inclosed runabout, standing in the road, by which two well-dressed ladies belonging not to her hard-working valley folk, but to the fashionable club at its head, were arguing. The object of their discussion was a hopelessly flat tire. The stream of their argument was interrupted by attempts at the foot-pump, and they fairly jumped at Molly with their questions:

"Is there a telephone near?" "Where can we find a garage?" "There's no garage in the valley, and if there was, there'd be no man in it," said Molly, thinking bitterly of these idlers and of her own day in the potatofield. "But I know how to put on tires. Where's your jack?"

Her sorrows forgotten for the moment, Molly had the old shoe pried off before the ladies had ceased their mild protests, and the new tube blown up before they had begun on the first round of thanks. But for all their gratitude, a fire smoldered within her, that these women, like the others who had gathered at the club to escape the influenza, should be living in luxurious idleness, wearing white gloves, while every woman that she knew was either sick or hoeing up potatoes in the dusk.

But one very useful thing Molly had learned in her management of people: never to lose her temper out loud. And though they offered her no respite at the pump, she said nothing. If she had, this story could never have been written.

At last the tire was as good as new, and they talked a little.

"Are n't you Mobilizing Molly?" asked one lady. "We 've heard so much about you."

"And everybody seems to love you so,” said the other. "I wish we could help with what you 're doing now. You always are doing something for somebody."

The praise and sympathy stirred the better, the brave, Molly, the Molly who was the major's "pal."

"You can help me," she said; "but you won't want to, the way I need."

"We pledge that we will," the two assented; and in a few minutes a plan had been unraveled from Molly's brain, long pondered by her, but which she had never dared to put in motion. She was dropped in front of her own house and ran in light-heartedly, weariness forgotten.

"Madame Ally," she said to her mother, "did you ever make an address before rich people? Well, I'm going to. And I'm going to get them to dig potatoes for me."

Mrs. Hatton's eyes smiled with pride, but beneath the surface she was hoping that Molly would n't be too disappointed. She had done many things successfully, but always with her own valley people. It would be easier to drive that camel through the eye of the needle, she thought, than to get those idlers at the club to work. But she said nothing to dim the sparkle in Molly's eyes. As for Molly, she was telephoning to the weather-man, fifty miles away.

THE great hall of the club was very cosy. Some of the decorations of the recent Hallowe'en party had been left hanging, and before an enormous fire on the hearth were grouped all the influenza fugitives,—four men and sixteen women, to be accurate. The men sitting lazily about, good looking and well fed, and the women, some in the most lovely clothes Molly had ever seen, made a picture of easy gaiety to which a suppressed longing in her nature responded. Soon she was joking with the best, and at the same time getting recruits without their knowing it. She did, later, make a little natural speech, telling about the summer frost and the present predica

potato digging with the four men, and to try to vanquish the army of boys, about eight in number, which Molly thought she could put on the battle-field. Before she left, Molly clinched the matter by pulling out the message she had obtained from the weather bureau. It read:

IN REPLY ADVISE YOU THAT COLD WAVE HAS REACHED WINNIPEG. EXPECT IT SUNDAY IN YOUR LOCALITY. WILL WIRE PROGRESS.

After she reached home Molly telephoned to her trusty aides in former enterprises, and succeeded in assembling

Like the geography of our planet, the job is cut into five grand divisions. First the tops, withered and usually frost blackened, have to be pulled off. Then a horsedigger uncovers the tubers in the rows. Third, the wandering spuds are raked out of the way of the horses' feet. Then comes the spine-creaking labor of pitching the worthy sized into bushel-holding crates. And finally, the full crates are lifted, with further spinal objections, into carts or trucks which bear them to frostless safety. This was the series of exertions in which Commander Molly was