"Why not? Your father treated my father, a prisoner of war, like a dog."
"That," said the gray-haired blacksmith, "is not the truth. I mind it well. He was housed and fed as one of the family. He worked no harder than the men of the household. He--"
"That's a lie!" the prisoner snarled. A crimson flush o'erspread the giant blacksmith's face. He took a step forward. Then he muttered low--"No. It won't do. Not at all it won't do. Not to be brawlin' with a swine like him."
He stood there for a moment, head bowed as if in prayer. Then his head lifted as he said:
"Here you, Bill and Hugh, take this fellow to the guard house.
"The rest of you," he waved an arm, "spread out an' search for the one that's still free. There was three of them, you all mind countin'."
There was a murmur of assent. Then they were away. "Come on," Brand said to Dave after the first man they had captured had been turned over to the blacksmith and a companion. "All this leaves me a bit groggy. Think of their deliberately planning to blow our house off the map!"
"And my father did treat that prisoner well," Brand said. "I remember his telling of it many times. We saw where their plane cracked up." Brand's voice rose. "Finding that plane is important. That third fellow may have been there and finished wrecking it. If not, we'll be the first to look it over."
The discovering of the wreck was no great task. The plane had cut a path through a cluster of young trees. In doing this it had stripped off its wings, but its cabin, motor, and instrument board had been left in fair condition.
"The R. A. F. will want to look at this," Brand said. "They'll want to know if the Huns have discovered any new tricks,--a bomb sight, or something like that."
He tried the cabin door. It stuck. Seizing a bar from the smashed landing gear he pried the door open. As he did so something fell at his feet. It was a long, flat pigskin billfold.
Throwing back the flap, he pulled out a handful of papers. The first of these appeared to be some sort of flying orders. He could not read the German print, but the names, written in by hand, were plain enough.
"Fritz Steinbeck," the boy read aloud. "That may be the dark-haired fellow we caught first."