“Did you hear that?” asked Ned of Jerry, for the sound of the alarm in the night had penetrated to their barracks, and several had awakened.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him! He mustn’t get away!” was shouted again, and then a glimmer of the truth began to dawn on Jerry.

“Corporal of the guard, post number seven!” was shouted from somewhere out on the fields about the camp.

By this time all in the immediate vicinity of the barracks, where Ned, Bob and Jerry had their bunks, were aroused. Lights were set aglow, and Ned, looking over to a bed which had been temporarily placed for Professor Snodgrass, cried:

“He’s gone!”

“Yes. And I guess he’s the one who’s got him!” added Jerry with a laugh. “I think it was his voice that caused the disturbance. Perhaps we’d better go out and see what it all is. If it’s some one who doesn’t know the professor they might take him for a spy, and use him roughly.”

[214]

“Who do you suppose he’s caught?” asked Bob. “Do you think it can be Crooked Nose or one of his cronies?”

“I don’t imagine it’s anything as dramatic as that,” returned Jerry. “I rather think the professor has been bug-hunting again, and he has found his quarry most unexpectedly, which has caused his jubilation.”

And this they found to be true. When they had slipped on a few garments and their shoes and had gone outside, they found Professor Snodgrass walking along between two sentries. On the faces of the soldiers were puzzled looks, but on that of the little scientist was a gentle and satisfied smile, as though the world had used him very well indeed.

“I have it, boys!” he exclaimed, as he caught sight of his three friends. “It is one of the rarest of its kind. I caught it——”

“He caught it on my post, whatever it is,” said one of the sentries. “And he nearly scared my supper out of me. Talk about snakes! I’d rather see ’em any night!”

“What did you find?” asked Jerry of the professor.

“A new kind of centipede,” was the answer, and the professor showed, in a glass-topped box, a horrible, many-legged insect that was squirming around, trying to get out.

[215]

“Oh, landy!” cried the sentry who had apprehended the little scientist, peering into the box. “And to think one of them was loose on my post! Say, how long do you live after one bites you?” he asked anxiously. “There might be more where I have to walk, and if one nips me——”

“Don’t worry,” said Professor Snodgrass. “The bite of this centipede, while it is painful, is not deadly. Proper treatment will make you safe. But this is a most wonderful specimen. I had hoped to find one, but not so soon.”

“And didn’t you discover anything else?” asked an officer who had come out to see what the excitement was about.

“Anything else? No, but I’ll keep on looking, if you’ll let me. I may find a scorpion, though I am a bit doubtful about finding them so far north. However, I’m sure that just before I caught the centipede I saw a number of giant spiders with double stings. I’d like to look for them, and——”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant!” exclaimed the sentry who had caught the professor. “But would you mind giving me another post? He found all them animals he speaks of right here where I’m patrollin’.” And the soldier looked more frightened than if he had been told to charge on a battery of machine guns.

“I mean you saw no unauthorized persons trying[216] to get through the lines, did you?” asked the lieutenant of the professor. “The insects were all you found?”

“Yes, but I haven’t found enough,” answered the scientist. “I should like more time. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to hunt for specimens, and I was most successful.”

“I’m afraid we shall have to ask you to postpone your operations until morning,” said the officer with a smile. “We want you to feel free to advance the cause of science as much as you can, but a war camp at night is a nervous sort of place, and the least alarm disturbs a large number of men.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Snodgrass. “I can, of course, wait until it is light. There may be more scorpions and centipedes out then.”

“I’m glad I go off duty,” murmured the sentry.

Official explanations were then made. As he had said, Professor Snodgrass had been unable to sleep, and had arisen, without awakening the boys or any of their comrades, and had gone outside the barracks with his electric flash light and his collection boxes.

He had seen the centipede wiggling along in the sand, and had caught it, his yells of delight, announcing the fact, giving the alarm, and causing the sentries to think a corporal’s guard of German spies had descended on them. Two of them[217] made a rush for the professor, much to his surprise. For when he was getting specimens he was oblivious to his surroundings, thinking only of what he was after.

The camp finally settled back to quietness again, and the professor went with the boys back to the barracks, but it was some time before any of them got to sleep again.

The next day Professor Snodgrass found a number of what he said were very rare and valuable bugs from a collector’s standpoint, but which, to the boys and their chums, seemed to be utterly worthless and great pests, for most of them bit or stung.

“Ah, but you don’t understand!” the scientist would say, when objections were made to his viewpoint.

“Well, as long as you catch bugs by daylight, and don’t wake us up in the middle of the night, we’ll forgive you,” said Ned.

“Especially after disappointing us so,” added Jerry.

“Disappoint?” queried the professor. “Why, I couldn’t have asked for a better specimen of centipede than the one I captured.”

They had a day’s furlough coming to them, a............