THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF PAUL REVERE Swiftly and silently along the dark road sped the dispatch-rider who had come out of the East, from the far-off Toul sector, _for service as required_.

All the way across bleeding, devastated France he had travelled, and having paused, as it were, to help in the little job at Cantigny, he was now speeding through the darkness toward the coast with as important a message as he had ever carried.
A little while before, as time is reckoned, he had been a Boy Scout in America and had thought it was something to hike from New York to the Catskills.

Since then, he had been on a torpedoed transport, had been carried in a submarine to Germany, had escaped through that war-mad land and made his way to France, whose scarred and disordered territory he had crossed almost from one end to the other, and was now headed for almost the very point where he had first landed.

Yet he was only eighteen, and no one whom he met seemed to think that his experiences had been remarkable.

For in a world where all are having extraordinary experiences, those of one particular person are hardly matter for comment.
At Breteuil Tom had another look at "Major Piff," who bent his terrible, scornful gaze upon him, making poor Tom feel like an insignificant worm.
But the imperious Prussian's stare netted him not half so much in the matter of valuable data as Tom derived from his rather timid scrutiny.
Yet he would almost have preferred to face the muzzle of a field-piece rather than wither beneath that arrogant, contemptuous glare.
It was close on to midnight when he reached Hardivillers, passing beyond the point of the Huns' farthest advance, and sped along the straight road for Marseille-en-Froissy, where he was to leave a relay packet for Paris.