Читать книгу Our Young Aeroplane Scouts in France and Belgium. Or, Saving the Fortunes of the Trouvilles онлайн

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“Give it up.” Billy couldn’t even make a guess. “He shows gay but harmless. I think I’ll look him over.”

On approaching the richly attired wanderer the boys with wonder noticed that he carried a gold-tipped baton and from a shiny knapsack on his shoulders rolls of music protruded.

The strange being kept proclaiming that he was going to direct the German military music on a triumphal parade through the streets of Paris. Henri could understand that much of the disconnected talk, and also that the speaker was the head musician of the German army in Belgium. He had been cut off from his command and become possessed by a fit of melancholy from which the boys found it impossible to rouse him. They divided with him what remained of the contents of Henri’s knapsack, but could not induce him to proceed with them.

“It’s a pity that a man like that should lose his reason. But this dreadful war strikes in most any kind of way, and if it isn’t one way it’s another.”

Henri was still thinking of the horrible happening when the Belgian battery was literally blown to pieces under his very eyes.