“Sure!” agreed Spike.  “Way I look at it, I got about one good fight left in me.  All I hope is, it’ll be a humdinger.”

Later they wandered along River Street, surveying the little town with new eyes.  They were far off—–­“over where the war was taking place,” as Spike neatly put it—­surveying at that long range the well-remembered scene; revisiting it from some remote spot where perhaps it had been said to them with flowers.

“We’d ought to tell Herman Vielhaber,” said Spike.  “Herman’s a Heinie, but he’s a good scout at that.”

“Sure!” agreed Wilbur.

They found Herman alone at one of his tables staring morosely at an untouched glass of beer.  The Vielhaber establishment was already suffering under the stigma of pro-Germanism put upon it by certain of the watchful towns-people.  Judge Penniman, that hale old invalid, had even declared that Herman was a spy, and signalled each night to other spies by flapping a curtain of his lighted room above the saloon.  The judge had found believers, though it was difficult to explain just what information Herman would be signalling and why he didn’t go out and tell it to his evil confederates by word of mouth.  Herman often found trade dull of an evening now, since many of his old clients would patronize his rival, Pegleg McCarron; for Pegleg was a fervent patriot who declared that all Germans ought to be in hell.  Herman greeted the newcomers with troubled cordiality.

“Sed down, you boys.  What you have?  Sasspriller?  All right!  Mamma, two sassprillers for these young men.”

Minna Vielhaber brought the drink from the bar.  Minna had red eyes, and performed her service in silence, after which she went moodily back to her post.

They drank to Herman’s health and to Minna’s, and told of their decision.

“Right!” said Herman.  “I give you right.”  He stared long at his beer.  “I tell you, boys,” he said at last, “mamma and me we got in a hard place, yes.  Me?  I’m good American—­true blue.  I got my last papers twenty-two years ago.  I been good American since before that.  Mamma, too.  Both good.  Then war comes, and I remember the Fatherland—­we don’t never furgit that, mind you, even so we are good Americans.  But I guess mebbe I talk a lot of foolishness about Germany whipping everybody she fight with.  I guess I was too proud of that country that used to be mine.  You know how it is, you boys; you remember your home and your people kind of nice, mebbe.”

“Sure!” said Spike.  “Me?  I was raised down back of the tracks in Buffalo—­one swell place fur a kid to grow up—­but honest, sometimes I git waked up in the night, and find m’self homesick fur that rotten dump.  Sure, I know how you feel, Herman.”

Herman, cheered by this sympathy, drank of his beer.  Putting down the glass, he listened intently.  Minna, at the bar, was heard to be weeping.

“Mamma,” he called, gruffly, “you keep still once.  None of that!”