I'm a brother to that wireless operator, if he used to be a Scout. Maybe I got no right to ask you to do anything, but maybe you'd fnd out if that man's watch is an hour slow. Maybe you'd be willing to do that before you send a wireless.

The captain looked full at Tom, with a quizzical, shrewd look. He saw now, what he had not taken the trouble to notice before, a boy with a big mouth, a shock of rebellious hair, a ridiculously ill-fitting jacket, and a peaked cap set askew. Instinctively Tom pulled off his cap.

"What's your name?" said the captain.

"Tom Slade," he answered, nervously arranging his long arms in the troublesome starched sleeves. "In the troop I used to belong to," he ventured to add, "they called me Sherlock Nobody Holmes, the fellers did, because I was interested in deduction and things like that."

For a moment the captain looked at him sternly. Then the Secret Service man, still whistling with a strangely significant whistle, stepped over to Tom.

"Put your cap on," said he, "frontways like that; now come along with me and we'll see if Doctor Curry, from Ohio, can accommodate us with the time."

When that flippant youth Archibald Archer beheld Tom Slade hurrying along the promenade-deck under the attentive convoy of one of Uncle Sam's sleuths, he was seized with a sudden fear that his protégé was being arrested as a spy.

The Federal detective was small and agile, with a familiar, humorous way about him. He had a fashion of using his cigar as a sort of confidential companion, working it from one corner of his mouth to the other, and poking it up almost perpendicularly as he talked. Tom liked him at once, but he did not

know whether or not to take literally all that he said.

"Conne is my name-Carleton Conne. Sounds like a detective in a story, don't it? My great-great-grandfather's mother-in-law on my sister's side was German. I'm trying to live it down." "What?" said Tom.

Mr. Conne screwed his cigar over to the corner of his mouth and looked at Tom with a funny look.

"We want to meet the doctor before he has a chance to change his watch," said Mr. Conne, soberly. "If he set that thing a little after nine last night (and he couldn't have set it before) he was probably too busy thinking of getting off the ship to think of much else. He ought to be just coming out of his state-room by now. We must see him before he sees a clock. You get me?" "Yes, sir," said Tom, a little anxious, "but I might be wrong, after all."

"Maybe," said Mr. Conne. "There are three things we'll have to judge by. There's his trying to get off the ship last night, and there's the question of how his watch stands, and there's the question of how he acts when we talk with him. See?"

"Yes, sir."

'Since you're a detective, remember this," Mr. Conne added, goodhumoredly, "it's part of the A-B-C business. Three middle-sized clues are better than one big one-if they hang together. Six little ones aren't as good as three middle-sized ones, because sometimes they seem to hang together when they don't really. See?" "Yes, sir."

"Where'd you ever get your eyes and ears, anyway?" said Mr. Conne, abruptly.

"You learn to observe when you're a Scout," said Tom.

Here and there little groups of passengers stood chatting as they waited for breakfast. Among them were a few

hooked nose. Perhaps there was the merest suggestion of the foreigner about him, but nothing in particular to suggest the German.

Mr. Conne sauntered up to him with a friendly and familiar air, though Tom was trembling all over.

"Excuse me, would you oblige me with the time?" Mr. Conne said, pleasantly.

The stranger wheeled about suddenly, with a very pronounced military air, and looked at the questioner.

"The time? Yes, sir," he said, with brisk formality and taking out his watch. "It is just half past six."

Mr. Conne drew out his own watch and looked at it for a moment as if perplexed. "Then one of us is about an hour out of the way," he said, sociably, while Tom stood by in anxious suspense. "According to the alarm down in the store-room I guess you're right," he added.

"What?" said the passenger, disconcerted.

"According to the time-bomb down below," repeated Mr. Conne, still sociably, but with a keen, searching look. "What's the matter? Suffering from nerves, Doctor?"

The sudden thrust, enveloped in Mr. Conne's easy manner, had indeed taken the doctor almost off his feet.

"I do not understand you, sir," he said, with forbidding dignity and trying to regain his poise.

"Well then, I'll explain," said Mr. Conne; "you forgot to set your watch when you left Cleveland, Doc, and there won't be any explosion down below at nine o'clock, and there won't be any at all, so don't worry."

He worked his cigar over into the corner of his mouth and looked up at his victim in a tantalizing manner, waiting. And he was not disappointed, for in the angry tirade which the passenger uttered it became very apparent

that he was a foreigner. Mr. Conne seemed quietly amused.

"Doc," said he, sociably, almost confidentially, "I believe if it hadn't been for this youngster here, you'd have gotten away with it. It's too bad about your watch being slow-German reservists and ex-Army officers ought to remember that this is a wide country. When you're coming across Uncle Sam's back yard to blow up ships, it's customary to put your watch an hour ahead in Cleveland, Doc. Where's all your German efficiency? Here's a wideawake American youngster got you beaten to a standstill

"This is abominable!" roared the

man.

"Say that again, Doc," laughed Mr. Conne. "I like the way you say it when you're mad. So that's why you didn't get off the ship in time last night, eh?" he added, with a touch of severity. "Watch slow! Bah! You're a bungler, Doc! Here's an American boy, never studied the German spy system, and, by jingoes! he's tripped you up-and saved a dozen ships and a half a dozen munition-factories, for all I know. German efficiency-bah! The Boy Scouts have got you nailed to the mast!"

Then suddenly the detective became serious.

"You'll have to show me your passport, sir," he said, "and any other papers you have. Then I'm going to lock you up."

wrong store-room, if it comes to that. They always called me Bullhead, the fellers in the troop did."

Mr. Conne cocked his head sideways, screwed his cigar over to the extreme

corner of his mouth, and looked at Tom with a humorous scrutiny.

"Did they?" said he. "All right, Tommy, Uncle Sam and I mean to keep our eyes on you, just the same."

HAVE you ever thought how words

come into the language? It is great fun to take a common English word and look up its ancestors. Probably the Federal authorities didn't realize that the word war is of German descent or it would have been interned with the other enemy aliens. But, after all, it has been a kind of "gentleman adventurer," fighting under many flags. For instance, war appears in Middle English (the language of England in about the twelfth century) as werre. In Old French, too, it is at first werre, then guerre, its present form. It is first cousin to an old German word, werran, which means to twist or entangle, and though you might not guess it, that kinship makes it cousin to our word worse.

Language has been called "fossil history" because the commonest every-day words preserve the history of the country to which they belong. A great deal of borrowing goes on between countries, but it is always possible to trace a word back to its origin or roots. What a record of inventions, how much of the past history of commerce words embody and preserve! The magnet has its name from Magnesia, a district of Thessaly, whence we get another word magnesia, since that medicinal earth was found there in large quantities.

WORDS FROM OLD WARS

Grenadier comes from the Spanish, where it was grenadero, a soldier armed with a hand grenade.

Grenade from the Spanish grenada, so called from its likeness to a pomegranate. Musket comes from the Italian, from mosquetta, a sparrow-hawk. At first musket was used to denote a small mortar which threw arrows. When gunpowder was invented a cannon was baptized musket.

Howitzer comes from the Bohemian haufnice, a sling for casting stones.

Bayonet derives its name from the city in France, Bayonne, where it was first made or used.

Sword comes straight from the AngloSaxon sweord.

Pistol is named from the Italian town Pistoja, famous in the Middle Ages for its manufacture of arms.

Dragoon comes from the French. They were soldiers who had dragons painted on their shields.

Cuirassier is from the French. The soldiers carried a breast protection made of copper-in French cuivre.

Hussar comes from the Hungarian husz, meaning twenty. The name is derived from the fact that long ago every twentieth recruit in Hungary was placed in one of the mounted regiments.

Major is derived from the Latin comparative of magnus, meaning great or high.

Colonel we get from the Italian colonello, which came to mean a column of men as well as a column of stone.

Chauvinism, a French term originally from Nicolas Chauvin, a soldier in the Army of Napoleon who was ridiculed by his comrades for his demonstrative and unreasoning patriotism.

Machiavellianism, a term descriptive of unscrupulous diplomacy and politics, derived from Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine statesman.

Pontoon is a Dutch word meaning a special kind of bridge.

quisition of the Chinese harbor at Kiaochow. He said, "In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun.' Scrap of Paper. The British ambassador in Berlin justified England's

WORDS AND TERMS ORIGINATING IN THE FRESENT WAR

The terms which owe their origin to this war are many. There are slang phrases and words that have become a part of the language, and there are words which were carried over from civil life and drafted into war service. There are also a number of catch phrases, some of them from chance remarks made by prominent men and adopted as a slogan.

Anzac is a composite word used to denote the troops of the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps that were engaged in the Gallipoli campaign.

Blighty comes from the Hindustani Balati, meaning England.

Cadets. The Constitutional-Democratic party of Russia, so called from the initial letters of the party name.

Hindenburg Line, a carefully prepared line of defense supposedly invulnerable, running through Laon, La Fère, St.Quentin, Cambrai, and Lille, and joining the old line at Vimy Ridge north of Arras.

Place in the sun. A phrase used by

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood The Lord Lieutenant Visits Belfast This is Field-Marshal French in the capacity of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

entrance into the war on the ground that Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium which England was pledged by treaty to defend. He reported a conversation with the German Chancellor, Bethmann - Hollweg, who said that "the step taken by His Majesty's government was terrible to a degree; just for a word, 'neutrality,' a word which in war-time had so often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her."