discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."

He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement,
he laughed--such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her
constrained expression softened in sympathy.

"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a
little.

"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"

"Then why--"

"Why do I laugh?"

"Well--yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."

At that he laughed again--laughed so whole-heartedly, so
delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.

"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.

"I don't know. It seems so funny--those Huns, those Boches, already
smeared from hair to feet with blood--pausing in their wholesale
butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"

His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:

"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're
belly-deep in it--Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.