The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

“THOSE ARE OUR GUNS THAT SOUND SO CLOSE”

CAPTAIN LUCY
IN FRANCE

BY

ALINE HAVARD

Author of

“CAPTAIN LUCY AND LIEUTENANT BOB”

Illustrated by

RALPH P. COLEMAN

PHILADELPHIA

THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

1919

COPYRIGHT

1919 BY

THE PENN

PUBLISHING

COMPANY

Captain Lucy in France

Introduction

To those who made friends with Lucy Gordon on Governor’s Island it will seem a great change to find her, in this second story, so far away from home. She is only one of thousands, though, to whom a few months of the great war brought more changes than they ever thought could be crowded into a lifetime.

Lucy can look back over less than a year to her old life at the army post in New York Harbor before the Colonel was ordered overseas. To that brief summer time when the Gordon family was united during her brother Bob’s West Point graduation leave, and to the dark days of the winter of 1917 when Bob was in a German prison.

Even then Lucy never lost hope, and her brave confidence was gloriously rewarded with Bob’s freedom. But in those dreadful weeks of waiting she outgrew her childhood, as though even in that pleasant home on Governor’s Island she knew that peace and content could never come back to her and to those she loved until America had fired her final shot at Germany’s crumbling lines.

She could not guess what lay before her,—what old friends she was to meet again in strange new places. Yet she had resolved, even before she had any hope of crossing to the other side, that, come what might, she would serve in her own way as steadfastly as her father served, as valiantly as Bob.

Contents

Illustrations

Captain Lucy in France

Captain Lucy in France

CHAPTER I
THE SUMMONS

“The really nice part about doing hard work is that you feel so happy when you’ve left off,” remarked Janet Leslie, stretching her lazy length on the shady grass with arms beneath her head. “Lie down again, Lucy. We have still half an hour to rest.”

“I’m not tired. I haven’t worked as hard as you and Edith, because I stopped to read Bob’s letter,” said Lucy Gordon, turning toward the other girl of the trio, who was likewise lying on the grass, her heavy pigtail fallen across one sunburned cheek.

“U-h!” grunted Edith Morris with closed eyelids. “That last row of beans was almost too much for me. Gardening isn’t my strong point. I’d rather be junior hospital aide all day.”

Lucy’s hazel eyes wandered from her two companions across the wide, level stretch of green, lit by the noonday sun, to where the light, spring shadows of the oak groves checkered its edges. The smooth turf was all cut up into a dozen big truck-gardens. With reckless disregard of the beautiful velvet lawn, busy hands had plowed and planted, until everywhere were springing up young corn and beans, peas, lentils and potato plants. Mr. Arthur Leslie’s big estate was given up to raising food for hungry mouths, and this little corner of it showed but a part of the changes that had come to Highland House since the beginning of the war.

It was the second week of May, 1918, and Lucy Gordon was in England. Though only a few miles from London, this quiet countryside seemed very peaceful, but that was only when you looked up at the clear, bright sky, or across the green fields. To watch the people at their daily tasks was to see that not one of them, from school children to old men and women, was for one moment idle, or forgetful of the burden each had to share. Certainly Lucy could not forget it, but she often thanked the constant work for the distraction it gave her anxious thoughts. It was two months since her father, now Colonel Gordon, had been ordered from his home station at Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor, to the western front. His departure had followed quickly her brother Bob’s convalescence after his German captivity, and on top of it had come her mother’s decision to put her knowledge of the care of the sick and of children to some use in the country which held her son and husband. Six weeks ago Mrs. Gordon had sailed to join English and American workers in the reclaimed French villages behind the lines, and with her had gone Lucy, after countless prayers to her mother, as well as to Mr. Leslie, her kind and sympathetic Cousin Henry, to be allowed to accept her English cousins’ invitation and remain as near as she could to her family.

“I’ll take care of her, Sally,—let her come,” Mr. Leslie had begged for her in those last, hurried days at Governor’s Island. “Arthur Leslie’s girl will love to have her there, and it’s tough leaving her behind, even at your mother’s. I’ll be back and forth often from the Continent, you know, and can bring you news of each other.” For Mr. Leslie, giving up the active superintendence of his big lumber camps, had organized and equipped a Red Cross unit which he meant to accompany to the French front. In the end he had his way, and Mrs. Gordon, only too glad to have Lucy near her so long as she was safe, had given her consent.

That was six weeks ago, and they had passed more quickly than any weeks in the fifteen years of Lucy’s life. For since coming to the beautiful Surrey home of her unknown English cousins, she had worked, like them, in almost every waking moment, and longed like them to do more, far more than was in their power, for the cause of the Allies.

Presently Janet roused herself to say thoughtfully, as she blinked up at the sun, “It is harder for Lucy than for us, because her family are all away. Our brothers are gone, Edie, and my father, but we both have our mothers left—though Mum wants to join Cousin Sally this summer, Lucy, so perhaps we’ll be left alone. You know your mother wrote how few there are over there to help, and how many of those poor French children are without homes. I wish I were old enough to go.”

Lucy’s eyes flashed instant response to her cousin’s words. In spite of her hard daily tasks her eager, restless spirit was still unsatisfied, and she dreamed, as in the year gone by, of greater and braver efforts.

“That’s so,” assented Edith, lazily opening her eyes, as she pondered Janet’s first words. “Of course Janet is your cousin, but she’s Scotch and English, and you’re American. Is all your family in France, Lucy?”

“No—there’s William,” said Lucy, smiling to herself as a little figure came before her mind’s eye with the name. “He’s my six-year-old brother, at my grandmother’s in Connecticut. But my father is with the A.E.F.[^[1]] So is Bob—in aviation—and Mother is behind the lines.” She sighed, but a quick realization of the truth made her add more cheerfully, “Still, it’s a lot to be as near to them as I am.”

[1]. American Expedition to France.

“I should think so!” exclaimed Janet, sitting up with a sudden return of energy at sight of a quick moving figure among the gardens. “Think if you’d been left way off in America.” She turned to her cousin as she spoke with a look of real understanding, for already frank, generous Janet felt a warm friendship for the courageous little American, and found in Lucy no less a devotion than her own to the Allies’ cause. “Here comes Mary Lee,” she said, nodding toward the advancing figure of a tall girl of eighteen, dressed, like themselves, in khaki working suit. “Time’s up, I guess.”

The two rose quickly to their feet, and gathered up rakes and hoes. “Time, Mary?” asked Edith, lingering for a final stretch. “It seems about ten minutes to-day since we came out from luncheon.”

“It’s a whole hour, lazybones,” said Mary Lee, smiling as she showed the watch on her tanned wrist. “I want you three to finish hoeing the corn over here, if you will.”

With no great enthusiasm but with obedient alacrity, the young farm-hands shouldered their hoes and walked off across the grass, for the Junior War Workers were under orders, and submitted like good soldiers to discipline. For days after her arrival in England Lucy had marveled at the organization which had marshaled thousands of schoolboys and schoolgirls in efficient squads, under the direction of their elders, and told them off for countless duties throughout the land. Since she herself became a member of the army of war workers she had gardened for endless hot, weary, satisfying hours. She had mended linen and sewed on buttons in the wardrobe room of the near-by base hospital, and had canvassed the countryside with Janet in the little donkey-cart, for eggs and other delicacies promised for the sick and wounded. It was extraordinary the amount of work that could be got, at no great hardship, from one willing and active girl; and when the three got together it really seemed as though they accomplished something, in spite of all Lucy’s unsatisfied longings.

It was four o’clock, and the sun had commenced to throw long shadows from the oak trees on the grass, when Mary Lee called to the dozen girls, busy here and there among the gardens, to stop work for the day.

“Phew!” breathed Janet, pushing back the thick, dark hair from her hot face, and stepping gingerly along the well cultivated row of tiny green shoots. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going in to lie down on my sofa, and just be perfectly worthless until it’s time for tea. Perhaps I’ll play with the kitten, but nothing more strenuous.”

Lucy said nothing, but inwardly she knew what she should do. At the noon rest she had only skimmed over Bob’s letter, and now it fairly burned the pocket of her khaki blouse. She had not seen her brother since they said good-bye on the Governor’s Island dock in September, 1917. She shouldered her hoe and followed quickly in her cousin’s footsteps, waving to Edith, who had started homeward through the grove as Lucy and Janet set off toward the house.

Half an hour later, bathed and free from clinging chunks of Surrey earth, Lucy was sitting in the window-seat of her bedroom in the beautiful old house, beside the diamond-paned bay window. Her soft, fair hair was smoothly brushed and tied with a black ribbon, and her khaki uniform changed for a blue linen dress. With a sigh of satisfaction she took Bob’s hastily written letter from its envelope and settled back among the cushions to read.

“Dear old Lucy:

“Hope you are not too homesick for the U.S.A. It’s no use, so cheer up and do all you can to help. But I know there’s no need to tell you that.

“I am as well as possible, and, as you may imagine, frightfully busy since the Boches began their last big slugging at our lines. I can’t tell you where I am, but it is, I’m sorry to say, nowhere near Mother or Dad, so I haven’t seen either of them for a month. I hope you got my last letter telling the good news that I brought down my first German plane. I am a full-fledged pilot at last, and a first lieutenant, with some sweet little Nieuports of my own that can do wonders in the air. Cousin Henry watched me fly the other day. His work brought him near here last week, and he gave me news of Mother, which I was awfully glad to get. Transportation in these parts is pretty crowded just now and letters come through slowly. I shouldn’t be surprised if you heard from her oftener than I do. Cousin Henry, like the trump he is, is working for all he’s worth. Time and money are nothing for him to give where they will help, and I wish I could write you some of the fine things he has done. I didn’t see him long, for we are on pretty constant duty now, and most of my outlook lately consists of German trenches seen eight thousand feet below me, with shrapnel spouting up from them like fireworks. I float around among the clouds and keep out of reach, while my observer makes his maps or gets his little machine gun ready if the German taubes come buzzing too near.”

“Out of reach,” Lucy murmured, with a quick frown. “Not if I know him!” and a worried wrinkle persisted on her forehead as she turned to the last page.

“The Yanks are doing their good little bit on the battle line. I wish there were more of us, but we’re not to be despised. Fritz doesn’t seem to think so, anyway, from the bombing he gives our trenches whenever our Allies give him a little respite. Father’s regiment did a fine piece of work the other day near you know where. I can’t write more definitely now, but he, with a number of his officers, was recommended for decoration by the French divisional commander.”

Lucy’s forehead cleared a little over this, and her serious eyes brightened as she read the words. Bob had only written a few lines more:

“I know you like the Leslies. If they are Cousin Henry’s sort you couldn’t help it. Janet’s brother Arthur is not far from here, and I intend to meet him as soon as we can manage it. I saw him last when I was ten and he was about seventeen. I haven’t a second more to write, so good-bye. Love and best wishes from

“Yours as ever,

“Bob.”

“Lucy!” called Janet’s soft voice outside the door, after half an hour had stolen by. “Aren’t you coming down to tea?”

Lucy sat up and recalled her thoughts from where Bob’s letter had led them, and her eyes from the darkening fields and woods beyond the leaded panes.

“I’m coming, Janet,” she answered, putting back the letter in its envelope and rising swiftly from the window-seat.

Lucy seldom indulged now in the reveries she had once been so fond of. They were too apt to become sad ones, and she wanted only to follow the example of her cousins and do each day’s work cheerfully. Rebellious moments came, and this last half hour had been one of them, when nothing seemed to matter but the endless salt waves that separated her from all she loved the best. But Lucy had gained stores of both patience and courage since that dark day in December of the year before when Bob had been reported missing.

She went out of her room and ran down the wide staircase to the floor below. The big, many-windowed drawing-room on the right had most of the furniture removed or pushed close to the wall to make place for bales of gauze and muslin, for Highland House was the headquarters of the district Red Cross Chapter. Beyond the drawing-room was the library, and there a table at one side was set with kettle and teacups, and the jingle of china and silver sounded from the doorway.

“Here I am, Cousin Janet. I hope you’ve kept a muffin for me?” said Lucy, looking inquiringly at the table and at the small, bright-eyed lady who presided at it with quick-moving fingers.

“Of course we have,” declared Mrs. Leslie with a nod and smile, as she handed Lucy a cup of hot milk and water, with a dash of tea in it.

“We’ve kept two, even,” said Janet, pointing to the muffin plate from her lazy seat in a big chair. “It’s wonderful what an appetite hoeing corn gives one—even for war rations.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever again complain of food at home,” sighed Lucy as she sank into a chair. She had learned some lessons about the value of a hearty meal during those eight weeks in England. There was enough to eat at Highland House, but it was simple food, limited to each one’s needs.

“This looks wonderful,” she added, carefully spreading the hot, split muffin with a slender share of margarine, for butter was an unknown luxury outside the hospitals.

“That must have been a long letter you had from Bob,” remarked Janet, searching her cousin’s face for signs of unusual worry or homesickness, after her hour’s seclusion. “But perhaps you weren’t reading it much of the time?”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Lucy. “I was thinking about—oh, you know—all sorts of things. But everything Bob wrote was pretty good news. He’s a pilot, as he told me last week, and doing the work he loves to do. He spoke of seeing Arthur very soon, as they’re not far apart.”

“Then he’s near Cantigny,” said Mrs. Leslie quickly, “for that’s where Arthur is now.”

At mention of her eldest son she flushed a little, chiefly with pride, but that feeling was always mixed with fear, and more than ever now, since the opening of the great offensive. Arthur Leslie had served for over three years, had received four wounds, and had been decorated with the Victoria Cross and the Croix de Guerre. In his mother’s anxious thoughts it seemed almost too much to hope that he should be longer spared.

Lucy glanced up at Mrs. Leslie’s face, in that moment when her thoughts were far away from the tea-table and the cheerful room, thinking as she had often done before, how gay and merry Cousin Janet must have been in the happy days before the war. She was cheerful still, in spite of the daily crushing weight upon her, but her lips were close set, and her dark eyes had a sad earnestness behind their glancing brightness. “Two sons and her husband,” Lucy thought. “That’s one more than Mother has to worry for.”

“Come, children,” Mrs. Leslie said, rousing herself after a moment. “Let’s go in and get the gauze cut and arranged for to-morrow’s work. I expect a good many will be here.”

The two girls rose obediently, and as they did so, the ring of the front door-bell sounded through the house.

“Perhaps that’s some one come to help us,” suggested Janet, while her mother, putting behind her the ever-present dread of a telegram from the War Office, said:

“More likely it’s old Mrs. Fry with those eggs she promised to collect for me.”

She turned as she spoke to learn from the servant who the visitor was. The newcomer, however, did not wait for announcement, but came straight on, and in another moment Mr. Henry Leslie walked into the room.

“Cousin Henry!” cried Lucy and Janet in one amazed breath.

He carried his hat and gloves still in his hand, and his kind, bright face was heavily marked with weariness and anxiety.

“Your boys were both well, Janet—Arthur too,” were his first words as he met Mrs. Leslie’s eyes.

“You’re not on leave again so soon?” Lucy faltered, and as she spoke a dreadful fear clutched at her heart and she caught tight hold of Janet’s shoulder as she stood beside her.

“Only for two days,” was Mr. Leslie’s still unsmiling answer, and as Lucy’s frightened eyes searched his he reached out for her hand and took it in a warm clasp.

“Let me speak to this child a minute, Janet,” he said to Mrs. Leslie, and the next moment she and Janet had left the room and Lucy was staring pale and trembling into his face.

“Mother—Father—Bob,” were the thoughts that whirled through her brain.

“Yes, Lucy dear, I have bad news for you,” said Mr. Leslie in answer to that unspoken question. “Bob is safe, thank God, but your father is seriously wounded. Now be brave, little girl,” he added as Lucy’s hand grew cold beneath his clasp. Leading her to a chair he made her sit down and knelt beside her. “Listen to every word I say, for I can’t waste a moment.”

The awful dizziness in Lucy’s brain seemed to subside a little. In a dazed sort of calmness she forced herself to listen.

“Your mother is only twenty miles away from him, but that stretch of twenty miles is impassable just now. There are not trains enough to carry shells and reinforcements to our hard pressed trenches, and Bob, farther up the line, where the press is hardest on the American front, cannot desert his post. Your father wants most awfully to see one of you, and you are the only one I can reach now. I’ve got permission where it seemed impossible. I’m going to take you to him to-night.”

There was not the slightest doubt of Lucy’s consent in Mr. Leslie’s words, and there was no longer any fear or shrinking in the hazel eyes from which Lucy shook the tears before she met his gaze. While he spoke she had buried her face in her hands, and the promise, made when Bob came out of German captivity, never again to give way to despair, seemed suddenly very hard to keep. But she stopped trembling and sat erect. For months she had breathed the atmosphere of brave endurance. Now the thought uppermost in her mind was this, “I must think only of Father. How we can get to him most quickly.” Aloud she asked, “When do we start, Cousin Henry?”

“You’re a brick!” said Mr. Leslie, but under his breath, for his own voice would not obey him just then, at sight of Lucy’s pale and tear-stained face. He managed to say, “We must leave here by seven o’clock.”

The next two hours seemed all one hurried flight to Lucy, with dinner forced upon her, which she choked down somehow, and Cousin Henry and Janet hovering about her with hopeful words and tender, sympathetic hands, and eyes that would fill up with tears in spite of them. Then hurried farewells, and the train that drew up in the gloom of the little station. After that came the long ride to Dover. It was not more than a few hours, but to Lucy it was endless.

It seemed to her that days already had gone by, when in the darkness of the first hours of the morning she felt beneath her feet the gangway of the ship that was to carry them across the channel. And here for a moment she forgot her surroundings and stood on the wind-swept deck, silent and motionless. All at once she seemed to have come very close to the great battle-field, for, borne through the misty darkness, she heard, for the first time clearly audible, the distant thunder of the guns.

The water was whipped into choppy waves by the shifting wind, and Lucy, standing by the cabin window at Mr. Leslie’s side, saw the dim lights of Dover bob up and down as the ship got under way. The cabin and decks were crowded with people, officers and men returning to duty from brief leaves at home, as well as a number of nurses and women war workers of various kinds. More than one of these cast a friendly, pitying glance in Lucy’s direction, but they were strangers to her, and she could not so much as return their smiles just then. The courage she had so resolutely summoned up at Highland House was fast sinking. She dropped down in the chair Mr. Leslie offered her in a secluded corner, and, sheltered by the darkness enforced by lurking submarines, buried her face in her hands and cried until the tears ran down between her fingers. Mr. Leslie let her alone for a while, but presently she felt his arm steal about her shaking shoulders, and raising her wet face she faltered, suddenly ashamed, “I guess I’m a coward, Cousin Henry, but I couldn’t help it.”

“I guess you’re not a coward,” was the quick answer, and, as he had done months before, the day he promised to go in search of Bob in prison, Mr. Leslie sat silent and patted his little cousin’s shoulder, with a tender, comforting hand. His thoughts went back to his own little daughter, whom Lucy’s unselfish care and comradeship had restored to health and strength. “It isn’t always easy to be brave, Lucy,” he said at last, “not for the bravest of us.”

Gradually Lucy dried her tears, and, tired out now almost beyond the power to think, she leaned back in her chair and fell half asleep. But even in her dreams her father’s face appeared before her. She could see plainly his clear gray eyes and bronzed cheeks. She saw him again as he stood on the Governor’s Island dock, the day he left to join his regiment,—tall and soldierly, in the uniform which always seemed a part of himself, and which he had worn for twenty-five years. The dream was almost a reassuring one, even when she woke, for it seemed somehow as though her father must still be determined and confident. But on top of this came the bitter certainty that when Mr. Leslie had said, “He wants most awfully to see one of you,” he had shrunk from adding “before he dies.”

At last she made up her mind to ask the question until now evaded.

“Where is Father wounded, Cousin Henry?” she whispered.

“He received a bullet through the lungs. His regiment pushed ahead five hundred yards, against heavy odds, and took the enemy’s trenches.” Mr. Leslie bent down toward his little cousin as he spoke, but a slow nod was her only answer.

At daybreak Calais was but a few miles distant. Lucy went into a cabin to wash her tear-stained face, and returning to Mr. Leslie’s side was persuaded to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk. The precautions observed during the crossing were cast aside, and with the French coast in plain sight beyond a narrow blue stretch of water, tramping feet filled the decks, and windlasses began hauling goods up from the crowded hold.

An hour later, after interviews in which Mr. Leslie showed his papers half a dozen times over to curious officials, he and Lucy walked down the gangway onto the quay.

“France!” flashed across Lucy’s tired mind, with even then a thrill, as slowly her eyes wandered over the varied crowd of officers and men, French, British and Americans, intent on landing and getting their effects ashore, while stores were lowered after them onto the docks. American soldiers in campaign hats not yet exchanged for the steel helmets, French guards with vigilant eyes on everything around them, British officers and Tommies, with here and there a big Highlander in kilt and bonnet—all hurried about their business, shouting what must be said in tones loud enough to rise above the clamor, to which the continuous firing from the front made a dull rumble of accompaniment.

It was a wonderful picture, but it all seemed strange and indistinct to Lucy at that moment. Her mind was too oppressed with grief to have a keen realization of what was going on around her. Mechanically she followed her cousin’s lead, and found herself in a motor-bus bound for the Calais station. Half a dozen English and as many American officers shared the crowded seats. The Americans were strangers to her, and she was glad of it.

The ride was short, and then, after an hour’s wait, they were on board a train again, still crowded in with soldiers and war workers. Mr. Leslie urged Lucy to try to sleep a little, but she could not. The guns were like thunder in the first mutter of an approaching storm, and they were nearing the storm every moment. About her sounded shouting voices as the slow train moved on, with frequent jolting stops and whistled signals.

Beyond the windows a lovely spring sun shone down on the French fields and orchards, and as the train followed the French coast line toward Boulogne, her tired eyes brightened at sight of the lovely scene unfolding on every side.

Here was France unconquered, undespoiled, still in the beauty of its springtime, as in the days of peace. The guns pounded at its doors and troop-trains passed and repassed endlessly to its defense through a world of green meadows and apple blossoms. Women and children thronged the fields, hard at work cultivating the ripening crops. They stopped to wave friendly greetings to the soldiers in the train. Near every red-roofed farmhouse grew a little orchard, laden with pink and fragrant-smelling blossoms. Through the open windows Lucy caught whiffs of the sweet air, and, closing her eyes a moment, could not believe she was nearing the great battle-field.

After an hour they left the countryside behind to enter Boulogne, and in the noise and confusion of the big station Mr. Leslie insisted on Lucy’s getting down with him for something to eat. It was a hurried meal, taken among a crowd of traveling officers and soldiers, for the train made only a short stop.

“A quarter of our journey is over,” Mr. Leslie told her, trying to put a little hopeful encouragement into his voice, when they had started on their way again.

Only a day ago, Lucy thought, as head on hand she stared out at the flowery meadows, while the train continued its slow way south, this journey had held for her all that was marvelous and unobtainable. In fancy she had made it more than once, with quickening breath and beating heart. To be in France—heroic France—nearing the very field over which Bob had flown so boldly, the land where the hard-pressed Allies stood undaunted. But now she no longer looked with pleasure at that lovely landscape outside the window. She was in a strange, far country; America was thousands of watery miles away, and her father lay wounded—alone, and wanting her. The train seemed a cruel tyrant as it lagged along, and she saw nothing but her father’s face, then her mother’s, tired and despairing, from where she vainly sought to reach him.

It was after a long morning’s travel that Mr. Leslie pointed out the majestic walls of Amiens Cathedral above the distant town. Lucy nodded silently, her eyes upon the noble beauty of it, but her mind wandering eastward beyond. The noise of the guns, until now merged into one muffled roar, seemed all at once to break apart into a hundred mighty voices. Overpowered with a terrible sense of dread she clasped Mr. Leslie’s hand for comfort, and felt it close over hers with a kind, understanding pressure.

“Are we almost there?” she asked faintly.

“Only an hour more, when we’ve passed Amiens,” was the hopeful answer. “Then a short ride in whatever we can find to pick us up, and we’ll be in the town. It’s Château-Plessis—taken from the Boches only two days ago—so communications are at loose ends just now. Hold on a little longer, dear—you’ve been such a trump all day.”

Lucy nodded dully, half deafened by the guns.

They were crashing out in one tremendous thundering volley, till the tearing din struck on Lucy’s ears and made them ring and tingle, while she shrank back more than once as from a blow, when two hours later they entered the paved streets of Château-Plessis. The motor-lorry, which had made a difficult way among the heaps of broken stone, dropped them before the old town hall, over which the Red Cross flag now floated. Mr. Leslie took Lucy’s arm and led her up the wide stone steps. A nurse came forward, and some men in uniform, but Lucy hardly saw them. They entered a great, many-windowed hall which had once been a court of justice, but now was a crowded ward, filled to overflowing with cots on which lay wounded men. On the floor lay more men, on blankets or mattresses, and between them stepped nurses and orderlies, intent and earnest, without time to so much as lift their tired eyes at sight of the newcomers. A surgeon had exchanged a few quick words with Mr. Leslie, and now he led the way to a door some distance down the ward. This door he opened, and after glancing inside the room, made Lucy a silent sign to enter.

Lucy was trembling from head to foot as she crossed the threshold. The hand that clutched at Mr. Leslie’s left red marks across his fingers. But she fought desperately to hide her fear as she raised her eyes to face the nurse who came forward from beside the cot at one end of the little room. She might have spared herself that effort at self-control made for her father’s sake. Colonel Gordon lay motionless upon the pillows, his sun-tanned cheeks not quite hiding the deadly pallor of his face. His breathing was quick and labored and his eyes were closed. But when Lucy knelt beside him and, forgetting all else around her, caught his responseless hand in hers, for a second his lids quivered and parted and the wide gray eyes looked into hers. Then the lids fluttered down again, and behind her she heard the surgeon, speaking loud against the roar of the guns, say, “He will hardly know her now. He’s but half conscious.”

Lucy bent her head over her father’s hand, and the tears, so long restrained, poured down her cheeks in a warm, salty shower. Sobs choked her, but she forced them back, or buried them in the blanket’s woolly folds. Then the hand she held stirred slowly in her clasp, and at the same time she felt a soft touch upon her tumbled hair. Incredulous, she raised her head, winking away the tears, and saw her father’s eyes fixed full upon her. Puzzled and uncertain, dimmed with pain, they met her eager, longing gaze, but recognition was somewhere in their depths.

“Lucy—you?” he murmured, and while Lucy, at the faint smile that touched his weary face, struggled for power to answer him, he added clearly, “Poor little girl! I wanted so to see you. It was hard for you—this journey.” His smile had faded to a frown of pain, but his hold on Lucy’s hand did not relax, and she, suddenly by some help outside of herself grown strong again, bent down and spoke close to his ear.

“I didn’t mind it, Father! I couldn’t leave you here to get well all alone.” Could it really be her old cheerful voice that spoke for her—the voice she had thought never to hear again? She smiled into the wondering eyes once more upraised to hers and went on confidently: “You’re going to get well, Father dear, you know. That old bullet in the Spanish War didn’t get you, and neither will this one. I know it—the way I knew that Bob was coming back, even when the Germans had him.”

Was it hope or only longing for life that touched with a new light the eyes until now so dim and sombre? The surgeon leaned forward, his gaze intently fixed on the wounded officer’s face. To Lucy’s brave and resolute heart it seemed an echo of her own prayers, as though her father felt already what in her wakening confidence she so longed to make him feel—that he was not going to die.

CHAPTER II
ON THE ALLIED FRONT

“You’re a good little nurse, Lucy Gordon! That’s the way to talk to a sick man,” said a strong, eager voice beside her, as Lucy left her father’s room at last, a long hour later. A tall young army surgeon, with bright blue eyes and ruddy, freckled face, had crossed the ward at sight of her. Lucy looked quickly up and for very astonishment her heart skipped a beat, while a slow smile lighted up her tired face. For an instant she was at home again on Governor’s Island, in that happy time when her family had all been together. Was it only two years since Captain Greyson had brought her through the measles—or was it a hundred years? Anyway he was a major now, from the leaves upon his shoulders.

“Was it you in there all the time?” she asked dazedly. “I never noticed.”

“That’s not surprising,” said the officer smiling. He took Lucy’s arm and led her through a doorway into a little ruined garden, lit by the afternoon sunlight. “Here’s a bench; sit down until Miss Pearse brings you out something to eat.”

Thankful beyond words for the presence of this old friend to care for her in her utter weariness, Lucy dropped down upon the stone seat and looked again into Major Greyson’s face. “I’m glad to see you,” she said simply. “Do you think—is there a chance——?” She could get no further, her shaky voice half lost in the cannons’ roar, but Major Greyson bent down to catch her words.

“Yes, there is, and don’t stop for one moment thinking it,” was his swift answer, as he looked at Lucy with keen, honest eyes. “There’s more of a chance since you talked with him than since he was wounded. There’s a tide in the succession of weary pain-racked days when nature needs hope and nothing else to keep up the battle, and, by Jove, you plucky little girl, you brought it!”

“I won’t cry again,” thought Lucy, fighting for self-control. She clenched her hands together with all her strength, while a solitary tear dropped down upon them. Major Greyson saw her struggle and, prompted by a heavy burst of firing from the French and American batteries in front of Château-Plessis, began to speak of the town’s capture.

“Things are still in poor shape here—hospitals and everything. You see, we’ve been in possession only since Tuesday,” he said, glancing about the little garden, cluttered with fallen stones and rubbish, to where, through a gap in the battered wall, the half-ruined street showed beyond. “We had a hard fight to get it but, strangely enough, in spite of the heavy bombardment, the place wasn’t deserted. Some of the inhabitants have simply stuck it out, German occupation and all. It takes a lot to drive these poor French people from their homes.”

“But weren’t lots of them killed?” asked Lucy, amazed.

“Not those who hid in their houses at the further end of the town. It was the poor refugees trying to get out of the place between bombardments who suffered most. We are doing all we can for them. Mr. Leslie has worked night and day, I’m certain, since the opening of this last offensive.”

“But aren’t the German lines still very near? The guns sound almost on top of us,” said Lucy, her voice grown scared and trembling again as a thunderous explosion hurt her ears.

“Oh, their lines are more than five miles away. Those are our guns that sound so close,” said Major Greyson reassuringly. He glanced over Lucy’s shoulder as he spoke, and gave a nod of satisfaction. “Good for you, Miss Pearse,” he said. “That’s just exactly what she needs. Here’s your breakfast and luncheon, Lucy, rolled into one.”

A young Red Cross nurse, with brown hair curling beneath her veil, and lips that smiled a pleasant welcome at the little newcomer, came quickly up with a full tray, which she set down upon the bench.

“Miss Pearse, here is Miss Lucy Gordon,” said Major Greyson, nodding in Lucy’s direction. “Miss Pearse has promised to take a little bit of care of you, Lucy, if you’re not too big now to be taken care of.”

“Indeed I’m not,” Lucy protested, rising to hold out a friendly, grateful hand, which the young nurse took warmly, saying:

“Perhaps you won’t think I’m taking much care of you when you see what I’ve brought, Miss Gordon. It isn’t even a lunch, but we’re rather hard up here.”

“Oh, I’m not particular,” smiled Lucy, thinking back a day to tea at Highland House, and to what she had thought hardship then. Now, she suddenly discovered that she was dying of hunger, at sight of the eggs and bread and the cup of chocolate on the little tray, when Miss Pearse uncovered the dishes.

“Sit down and eat it all,” urged Major Greyson. “Your father is asleep and, anyway, I’m going back to him.”

Lucy needed no more urging, and taking the tray upon her knees she ate the little meal with keen enjoyment, and a great feeling of returning strength in both mind and body.

“That’s better,” remarked Miss Pearse ten minutes later, when some of the healthy color had stolen back into Lucy’s pale cheeks. “Now you don’t look like a ghost any more. Here’s your cousin coming to find you.”

She pointed to the doorway from which Mr. Leslie was just coming out, and picked up the tray of empty dishes, saying, “I’ll take these and go back, for you won’t be alone now.”

“Don’t go far; how can I find you?” asked Lucy, anxiously clinging to this new friend in the sad strangeness of her surroundings.

“I shan’t be more than a hundred yards away,” smiled the girl, nodding toward the door leading to the big crowded ward, and taking up the tray she crossed the garden, stopping to point out to Mr. Leslie the bench where Lucy was.

Mr. Leslie had been snatching a little of the sleep denied him for the past thirty-six hours, and now, almost rested, he looked better than when Lucy had first seen him at Highland House. Her spirits rose unaccountably at sight of his more cheerful face, as she made swift room for him on the seat beside her.

“Major Greyson said Father could get better,” were the eager words that came first to her lips. She scanned Mr. Leslie’s face for confirmation of her hopes, and found a part of what she sought in the slow nod with which he answered:

“Major Greyson wouldn’t have said it if it were not true; and, more than that, he told me he had hopes. Thank God I brought you, dear. Your father has been sleeping quietly ever since your visit. He longed so for some of you to come, and wondered in his fever where you were.”

“Oh, Cousin Henry,” Lucy cried, a desperate longing rising in her own heart, “how many days before Mother can be here? Surely the trains must be running better now?”

“They are running every minute of the day and night, but not just along her way, which is north-west. And mostly they are freight cars, crammed with men and munitions, being rushed to where they are most needed. You see, it’s hard to tell just when she can get here, for of the several telegrams I know she has sent only one reached me.”

Lucy sat drearily silent.

“It won’t be many days, though,—I’m sure of that,” declared Mr. Leslie, speaking in a more hopeful tone after having put the facts frankly. “Look for her any hour, and you may be just as right as I am. And now see here,” he added, rising from the bench and holding out his hand. “I want you to come and get some sleep. You won’t be any good to your father if you are all worn out. Major Greyson says you may lie down in the nurses’ resting room off the ward. I promise to call you as soon as your father wakes.”

Sunset was streaming through the narrow lancet-shaped windows of the room and gleaming on the old stone floor when Miss Pearse’s voice, calling to her, roused her from sleep. “The Colonel is awake now,” she said, bending over the cot as Lucy rubbed her heavy eyes.

Lucy sprang up, struggling to collect her thoughts, as she followed the nurse out of the room. She had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head had touched the pillow, and now awake again to the never-ending hammer of the guns upon her ears, she marveled at it. She smoothed back her hair, remembering dimly that she had not fixed it since that morning on the boat, and wondering how long before people living in a place like this could learn to get up and go to bed as though they lived through regular, peaceful hours. Miss Pearse looked as neat and calm as the young nurse who had taught the army girls first-aid on Governor’s Island, though her cheeks were flushed just now with weariness after a long, hard day. “Come in,” she said to Lucy on the threshold of Colonel Gordon’s room.

Lucy entered softly, for not yet had the uselessness of quiet footsteps in the midst of thundering guns occurred to her, and went to her father’s side. His long sleep had lifted a little of the shadow from his pale face, but his breathing was still short and difficult, and his eyes were closed. Lucy’s heart sank miserably as she looked at him. Behind her Major Greyson entered, and kneeling beside the cot, clasped the wounded officer’s wrist, looking keenly into his face.

“Father,” said Lucy at last, her voice shaking in spite of all she could do, “won’t you speak to me?”

Colonel Gordon stirred a little and opened his eyes. For a moment he was silent, then, as before, a smile flickered over his set lips, and taking a hard breath he murmured, “Lucy—here—where’s——?” The rest was lost as in sudden weakness he closed his eyes again and turned his face to the pillow.

“Where’s Mother, did you say?” entreated Lucy, bending over him. “She’s coming, Father, truly, she’ll soon be here!” But Colonel Gordon could not speak in answer this time. Only his hand, moving for a second toward Lucy’s arm, showed that he felt her presence.

Lucy turned a despairing face to Major Greyson, but his look of patient hopefulness had not changed. He motioned to her to leave her father’s side, and when, with a backward glance at that still figure on the cot, she had obeyed, he drew her outside the door and spoke as though answering her question.

“It’s all right; I didn’t expect any more. This is the worst time of the day for him. I still hope, and have every reason to think he is better to-day than yesterday.”

“Oh, Major Greyson,” Lucy faltered, vainly seeking to put her thoughts into words.

The surgeon led her out again into the little garden, over which darkness had now begun to fall, unbrightened by lights from the sombre streets of the half-ruined town. Lucy looked up at the first twinkling stars in the clear sky, and they seemed the only familiar things in all that dreary cannon-racked desolation.

“You’re tired, poor little girl,” said Major Greyson, when a great sigh had fallen involuntarily from Lucy’s lips. “Miss Pearse is going to take you across the street to the house where the nurses sleep. You will be right by her, and I give you my word at the slightest change in your father you shall be sent for. You won’t be any good to-morrow if you don’t sleep to-night. Mr. Leslie is waiting in my room to have some supper with you now.”

It was soon after eight o’clock when Lucy bade her Cousin Henry good-night and left the hospital in Miss Pearse’s charge. Mr. Leslie had done his generous best in the past hour to cheer her, but without success, though she had tried hard to respond to his kind efforts. Her eyelids were like leaden weights, her brain seemed to have no thought nor feeling left in it, and she crossed the street, which was cluttered with stones and débris, stumbling as she walked, and vaguely wondering if all this were true. Miss Pearse was very kind and helped the tired girl to bed with gentle hands and in understanding silence. But once in her narrow cot, in the room adjoining that in which Miss Pearse and another nurse slept, Lucy’s dulled mind amazingly awoke and flashed before her pictures of everything she had seen and done in the past day and night. The pounding of the guns, which had become for a while an almost unnoticed part of her surroundings, seemed swelled to a horrible din that beat like hammers on her forehead, and not even with her head buried in the pillow could she find peace enough to sleep.

For months afterward Lucy remembered that first night at Château-Plessis. The misery of her loneliness overwhelmed her as she lay there wide-eyed in the thundering darkness, beset by fears she vainly struggled to put aside, afraid to look back at what seemed peaceful days behind, or ahead, to what might come to-morrow. At last she could bear it no longer, and sitting up in bed she determined to go and beg Miss Pearse’s company, tired though she knew the poor nurse must be after her long day’s work. But Miss Pearse had not quite forgotten the lonely little girl near her. Before Lucy had left her bed she heard some one at the door of her room, and a kind voice said, “Lucy! Can’t you sleep? I’m going to lie down on your bed beside you.”

There was not much room, but Lucy made all she could, with a heart almost too grateful for speech, and her faltered thanks was lost in the roar of the cannon. With Miss Pearse dropping off to exhausted sleep at her side, the thoughts that had tormented her weary mind faded off into blankness. At last she fell asleep.

When morning came Lucy opened her eyes and found she was alone. The sun shining onto her cot had awakened her, and, sitting up, she looked soberly around at the bare, unfurnished room. The plaster on the walls was cracked, and fallen stones had nearly blocked up the chimney. Only in one corner hung a picture, as though forgotten in hurried flight. It was of a dog, jumping up to beg, with ears pricked forward and twinkling eyes behind his silky hair. Lucy smiled at it, wishing it were alive. With heavy heart she shrank from facing the new day, and desperately longed to fall back into dreamland. But, unlike the night before, she felt strength enough within her to summon up her courage and make a prompt and vigorous effort.

“Come on, Lucy Gordon, buck up! You can’t give in. Have they brought you this near the battle line to be a coward, or are you going to help your father and,” scornfully, “they used to call you Captain Lucy?”

Like Alice in Wonderland, she was fond of scolding herself, and could do it as effectively as any one else could have done it for her. Close on top of the scolding she got up and in her anxious eagerness to be dressed and to see her father she forgot to pity herself further, and thought more than anything else that this day might bring her mother to her before it ended. “But if only those guns would stop one minute!” she faltered, as she paused in her dressing to cover her ears, half deafened by the double bombardment.

Out of the bag so hurriedly packed at Highland House she selected a blue gingham dress, for the day was warm and sunny. She gave a hasty glance at her hair-ribbons in the little mirror she had brought with her, and, after putting the bare room in order, went out in search of the stairway. It was close at hand, beyond the adjoining bedroom, the foot of it opening directly on the street. Lucy ran down it, the sound of voices coming to her from outside above the cannons’ noise.

The street was crowded with French soldiers, together with a scattering of Americans, who looked very much a part of things as they passed by, joined in friendly groups with the poilus. One and all were hot, dusty and loaded down with field equipment, for there were few permissions just now, and these men had been sent back for but a few hours’ respite from the fighting-line. Lucy’s eager, shining eyes followed each American soldier as he passed, all else forgotten but those dear familiar figures, until two women, coming by with baskets on their arms, stopping to smile and point in her direction, recalled her to herself. She returned their smiles as cheerfully as she could, wondering much at the patient endurance which had left their thin faces neither frightened nor despairing. A dozen women passed her as she stood on the threshold breathing the soft spring air, and several children too. All were hurrying, intent upon their errands, but they looked quiet and self-possessed, not seeming even to hear the never ceasing explosions which forced them to speak loudly in each other’s ears.

A minute later Lucy caught sight of Miss Pearse and Mr. Leslie crossing the street from the hospital, and she quickly made her way among the broken paving stones to meet them. With beating heart she searched both their faces, and drew a sigh of relief when Mr. Leslie met her anxious eyes with a nod and smile of greeting.

“It’s all right, Lucy,” were his first words. “Your father is, if anything, better. He is waiting to see you now.” He looked with some concern into her face, which was pale after the hours she had lain awake, but she smiled with quick reassurance.

“Don’t say I look tired, Cousin Henry,” she begged. “I did sleep some of the time, didn’t I, Miss Pearse? And I feel perfectly well.”

“You slept more than I expected you to in this racket,” said the nurse frankly. “It takes several days to get so you don’t mind it.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” remarked Mr. Leslie, as they mounted the steps of the quaint old building, crowned with its two Gothic towers. “I’ve been near here for several weeks now, but to tell the truth I’m not used to it yet.”

The sun was shining brightly into Colonel Gordon’s room, and as Lucy entered it her spirits rose with a sudden great rush of hope. Her father’s eyes were open and for the moment his slow, heavy breathing did not contract his forehead into lines of pain.

“Oh, good-morning, Father!” she said, gulping down a wild desire to cry, and smiling crookedly instead. She dropped onto the little chair beside the cot and took his hand in hers. “You’re better, I know you are,” she told him, with shining eyes.

“Hope so,” murmured Colonel Gordon, shifting his weight cautiously on the pillows. The fingers that Lucy held tightened and clasped hers, and her father looked down at the little hand in the blue sleeve. “Lucy,” he said slowly, as though making an effort to collect his thoughts, “Leslie is here with you—isn’t he?”

“Yes, indeed—he’s right outside,” said Lucy quickly. Looking into her father’s eyes she saw that they had grown clear and purposeful in spite of the dark shadows of pain beneath. With a sudden clearing of his brain he spoke more quickly:

“You ought not to be here. I asked for you when I was too far gone to think.” He stopped for a moment, listening to the guns. “They’re not far off. Our lines cannot be more than four miles away. You must go back to England.”

“Oh, Father!” cried Lucy breathlessly, “you won’t make me go back as soon as this? The town is quite safe, and I must see you a little stronger before I go. Mother will be here soon, you know. Think what a chance it is for me—to help you to get well. Don’t you know how I’ve always longed to help?”

A smile touched Colonel Gordon’s pale lips as he answered slowly, “You have helped, little daughter; I’ve got to get well. I know it since you came. Before that it seemed easier not to—fight.” He struggled for breath and closed his eyes.

Terrified, Lucy started up, but her father’s fingers still clasped hers, and, conquering her fear, she sat quietly beside him until footsteps sounded at the door and Major Greyson entered.

“All right—stay where you are,” he nodded, his eyes on Colonel Gordon’s face.

The sun moved slowly across the floor, as for an hour Lucy sat silent and motionless, until her father’s fingers at last relaxed, and he fell into a quiet sleep.

Miss Pearse put an arm about Lucy’s cramped shoulders and led her from the room and out into the garden.

“You poor little kid, you haven’t had your breakfast,” she said, pointing to the tray she had made ready and set on the old stone bench. “We’ve finished long ago. Sit down this minute and eat, and I’ll call Mr. Leslie. He’s been waiting to talk to you.”

Lucy thought she had never tasted anything so delicious as that breakfast of bread and army bacon. She could not stop for more than a nod to Mr. Leslie when he approached her, but his thoughtful smile had a far-away look in it as though he had plenty to think over while he waited for his little cousin to satisfy her hunger. At last she put aside her tray and he sat down by her on the bench, drawing some papers and envelopes from his pocket.

“I’m going off to-day, Lucy,” he began, “to attend to some business of my own, and secondly, to arrange for your return to England. Hold on a minute and let me finish,” he said quickly, as Lucy showed every sign of interrupting him. “I have to make those arrangements a day or two ahead if you are to get through with as little delay as we had in coming here. These papers have to be signed by the proper authorities, and they cannot always be found at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t mean that you must leave to-morrow or even the day after, though I have just had rather a debate with Major Greyson on the subject.”

“Does he wish me to go?” asked Lucy indignantly.

“No, I’ll have to confess it was I who made the suggestion. I said this beastly bombardment was too hard on your nerves. Your father is better, your mother is on her way here, and you ought to go. Major Greyson seemed to think he knows you better than I. He declared that your nerves could stand the strain, and that so long as you were here you might stay two or three days longer, for your father’s sake.”

“He’s right; I can stand it,” exclaimed Lucy with a quick, happy smile, for it is happiness to have struggled hard for courage and to have found it at last. “I may stay, Cousin Henry—you said I might?” she pleaded, all her fear and loneliness forgotten in renewed longing to be of service to her father, and to see her mother again, if only for an hour.

“I’m going to find out about the journey back,” was Mr. Leslie’s cautious answer. “We needn’t decide just yet on the time for it—especially as we shouldn’t be able to keep to any schedule. We shall have to return as best we can.”

“Are you going now, Cousin Henry? Which way?” asked Lucy, feeling suddenly very down-hearted at the thought of losing his brave, comforting presence.

“To Amiens to-day; to American Headquarters in this sector some time to-morrow, and back here to-morrow night. The distances are short, and I’ve already booked a ride in a motor-lorry to Amiens. I know you’re in good hands, little girl,” he added, rising from the bench and taking Lucy’s hands in his. “Miss Pearse has promised me to take care of you, and Major Greyson is right on the spot. I won’t be gone longer than to-morrow night.”

“All right—don’t worry about me,” said Lucy, summoning the ghost of a smile as she slipped her arm through his and walked with him to the ruined gateway of the little garden. All around the gate rose-bushes were bursting into leaf and bud as though this spring the stones of the wall were still solidly in place, and the garden paths still swept and tidy. Outside they met Major Greyson crossing the street from the officers’ mess.

“Are you off, Leslie?” he inquired, stopping at the gate. Then with a frank nod of cheerful encouragement at sight of Lucy’s serious face, he added, “We’ll have good news for you when you come back.”

“Keep your eye on this little soldier,” urged Mr. Leslie, trying not to feel anxious at the moment of departure.

“Don’t worry about Captain Lucy—oh, yes,” to Lucy, “that’s what they used to call you!”—was the prompt response. “I’m going to take her in now to see the Colonel. He’s really better, and the guns have slowed down a trifle—perhaps they can hear each other speak.”

“Good-bye, Cousin Henry,” said Lucy, still lingering at the gate. “Bring Mother back with you, that’s all I ask.”

On that day and the next, to Lucy’s unspeakable gratitude, Colonel Gordon continued to improve. Slowly he came back from the shadowy depths of unconsciousness, and hour by hour his powerful frame gained a new victory over his desperate weakness. His heavy, hard breathing grew gradually more natural, and on the morning following Mr. Leslie’s departure, for the first time in many days, the deadly pallor was gone from his thin face, and the lines of pain faded from his forehead as he slept. The artillery fire had slackened on both sides into what seemed comparative quiet. For long hours Lucy had sat beside him, a silent prayer of utter thankfulness in her heart, her only desire that her mother should come and find them together at this happy moment. Again and again she had imagined the meeting. Her mother’s tired and anxious face, worn with a long journey’s dreadful apprehensions, and the swift and joyful relief of the good news awaiting her. “If she would only come to-night,” she thought on the evening Mr. Leslie had promised to return. Fears and doubts on her mother’s account began to trouble her, though Miss Pearse assured her they were needless.

“She may have to endure a hundred tiresome delays on the road, but she will not be in danger,” the kind young nurse persuaded her. “The railroads are out of range of the guns. Just have patience a little longer.” Once more she repeated this as she and Lucy crossed the street that night on their way to bed. Mr. Leslie had not yet come, but it was early to expect him.

Whether Lucy took her companion’s words to heart or whether she was too sleepy to worry about anything for long, she went to sleep that night without much trouble, glad of what was really a lull in the bombardment.

For several hours in the welcome quiet she slept peacefully, until a dream began disturbing her until she tossed restlessly on the hard, narrow cot. The dream became a nightmare—a whirling thing about some mad adventure. It roused her almost to wakefulness, but not enough to know she was awake. Was she at home on Governor’s Island? The drums were beating wildly in her ears. Now she had risen into the air—with Bob in his airplane. But they were in a thunder-storm, or else what was that awful thunder? She sat up, wide awake, conscious of having called out with all her strength.

Miss Pearse’s voice spoke to her from the door. “Did you call, Lucy? Don’t be frightened. I was coming in to stay with you.” She shouted, but Lucy could not hear her. The roar and crash of the guns was like the noise of thunderbolts above the house—a thousand of them together. Miss Pearse sat down on the cot beside her and spoke into her ear.

“The town is not in danger, but the firing started again an hour ago. The Germans have begun a big attack for miles along the line.”

CHAPTER III
A GLIMPSE OF BOB

Lucy knew she could sleep no more that night. She got up and began to dress, with pounding heart and uncertain fingers. There was no use trying to talk. Miss Pearse and her companion, Miss Willis, were also getting dressed, intending to return to duty at the hospital in anticipation of heavy casualties from the front. Dawn was just breaking through the shadowy darkness. Lucy stood by the open window, her ear-drums ringing from the quivering air, and thought of the peace of a Surrey morning, when often she had looked out at dawn on the quiet woodland, and of the first soft notes of the birds around them when she and Janet had started out early to their gardens. If she were only back there! As this thought came unbidden she tied her hair-ribbon with a sharp, reproachful jerk, and answered herself with genuine scorn.

“Is this what all your longing to get nearer to the front and be as brave as Bob amounts to? Slacker! Heavens, what a big one,” she breathed, her mind distracted from all else as a mighty explosion shook the house.

“Lucy, are you ready?” asked Miss Pearse in her ear. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. Come to the hospital.”

Out in the street in the half darkness, figures of men were hurrying past, calling to each other in scraps of French or English that went unheard in the increasing uproar. The eastern sky was illumined before the dawn by bursts of red and yellow fire, and the air smelt thickly of smoke and dust. Lucy thought dazedly of her father, then of her mother, remembering thankfully Miss Pearse’s confidence that she must be further from the guns than Château-Plessis. Perhaps Mr. Leslie might be with her—he must surely be almost back by now. Lastly, her anxious thoughts hovered about her brother and could find no comfort there. Was Bob in the midst of that awful conflict? She knew he was, since the attack must reach as far as Cantigny. At that moment, though, it did not seem possible that such a bombardment could last many hours.

Outside the ward Major Greyson was talking with a convalescent infantry officer whom Lucy knew. At sight of her they both came forward, and Captain Lewis said close to her ear, “Don’t be frightened. We are holding them well. Half of this infernal racket comes from our own guns, you know.”

“It isn’t pleasant to hear, though, is it, Lucy?” asked Major Greyson. “Your father had a little morphine, so he is sleeping. He’s doing splendidly. Think of that instead of your other worries. It will soon be daylight now, and this won’t last forever.”

Lucy nodded without speaking, for even in shouts she could hardly hear her own voice. The officers left her, each bound on a different errand, and she followed Miss Pearse into the nurses’ dining-room.

The first shafts of light were stealing through the narrow windows and in the dusk a dozen nurses were hurriedly breakfasting. Miss Pearse made room for Lucy beside her and handed her a plate and cup. A general haste of preparation filled the air. As they ate in silence, the bursting shells making speech next to impossible, other nurses and orderlies went back and forth outside the room, carrying blankets and mattresses in a last effort to find more room in the already crowded building. This hospital, improvised by the American Medical Corps, and a second, in charge of a French staff, were the only ones in Château-Plessis, and the need had grown overwhelming.

Before the nurses scattered Miss Pearse brought word to Lucy that she might go to her father’s room. The darkness had vanished now, and the clear light of dawn filled the hospital. Lucy found Major Greyson by Colonel Gordon’s bedside.

“He’s still asleep,” he said when she was close enough to hear him, nodding his head toward the quiet figure on the cot. “His pulse is good, and he breathes easily. You may stay here a while, if you like—he may wake any minute.”

Major Greyson had risen from the chair and, seeing him ready to go, Lucy hastily asked the questions that were trembling on her tongue. “Major Greyson, where do you think Mother is? And Cousin Henry promised to be back last night!” She shouted into his ear as he bent down to listen, but the bursting shells almost drowned her words. He nodded quickly to show he understood.

“They are held up,” he said with certainty. “The railroad is open to nothing but troop-trains to-day. With luck they may manage to get on a supply-train, but I’m afraid they’re blocked somewhere along the road. You mustn’t worry,” he added, speaking as hopefully as he could in a voice which in a quiet place would have carried across a field. “They are well out of danger—further from the front than we are.”

Lucy sat down beside her father, thankful that he had slept through this much of the tumult, and fell to thinking of Bob until her fear for him grew greater than her courage, and resolutely she tried to turn her thoughts away. Had not Bob come back once from deadly peril? From the merciless hands of the enemy? Remembering her own despair in that dreadful December of 1917, Lucy never failed to find some hope for her brother’s safety. Her father did not wake, and when a nurse came to take her place she left him and went out into the little garden. The sun was rising gloriously behind the clouds of dust and smoke blown from the batteries before the town. The pounding of the cannon seemed for a moment to have slackened, even a slight lessening of the din bringing a quick relief to her tired ears. Down by the ruined gate there was a little crowd of people, and she made haste to join them. They were doctors, nurses and convalescents together with a few people of the town, their eyes all turned toward the rising sun, and their hands lifted as a shield against its rays.

“What is it?” asked Lucy of a medical officer who stood beside her, binoculars in hand.

He pointed to where the sky was touched with pale rose above the clouds of smoke. Three little specks were darting up toward the blue. “Can you see those planes? The Germans are trying hard to get a detailed plan of our new batteries. Their airmen have been up for hours, but so far our scouts have been too much for them. Look there!”

Above the mounting specks appeared two others, seeming to pounce down upon them. Lucy held her breath as the newcomers swooped and circled, closing in upon the three below, until a feathery cloud cut them off from the eager, watching eyes.

The moment of suspense among the little group changed to a stirring of anxiety and disappointment, felt rather than heard in the cannon’s roar. Most of the hospital staff members tore themselves away to return to their duties, but Lucy could not take her dazzled eyes from that glowing sky. Half unconsciously she followed the little group of townspeople who, seeking a place in the open, away from the pointed towers of the old town hall, moved step by step down the ruined street to the square of which the hospital made a corner. The sun had risen higher now, and beneath it the planes were again visible against a background of pearl and rose. As they gazed breathlessly up at those moving dots that were men in desperate struggle, one of the planes fell swiftly toward the earth. Lucy gave a quick gasp of anguish. She could not bear to watch, but neither could she turn her eyes away. Was the plane just brought down Allied or enemy? She inquired of her nearest neighbor in disjointed shouts of French, but the woman shook her head sadly, knowing no more than she. Was Bob among them? Lucy longed most to know that, for better or worse. “It’s waiting I never can bear,” she had said to Marian Leslie months before. Now it seemed as though the war was all made up of waiting.

The young doctor had left her his binoculars, but she found it hard to use them in the quivering roar of the guns against the glaring sky. If the airplanes would come a little nearer she thought she could find out something. That wish at least was quickly granted. Out of the distance the specks grew bigger with amazing swiftness. Lucy winked her eyes, before which disks of red and black were dizzily floating, from the glowing sunlight. Around her, fingers were pointed in excited gestures, and her ears caught fragments of shouts and exclamations. On came the airplanes, until in what seemed but a breath of time they had grown to big winged objects that hovered in plain sight, far overhead, but not a mile away in horizontal flight. Now they were out of the sun’s path, and the watching eyes could look at them undazzled. There were six, as nearly as Lucy with fast beating heart could count them in among the feathery clouds that flecked the sky. The little crowd had gathered to three times its size, and for all the thunder of the guns, the cries of the excited people could be heard in their anxious expectancy.

Lucy gave a quick look around her as she lowered her head for an instant to ease the aching muscles of her eyes and throat. A few people from the hospital had rejoined the crowd and familiar faces were among them. A queer sensation of having caught a glimpse of some one intently watching her—of a keen pair of eyes looking out from among the group of shawled women and old men and boys gathered from the near-by streets—made her glance around once more. There was no one now whose gaze was not turned upward, and she looked at the clouds again, the strange impression forgotten.

The six planes had separated into two groups. Two were high among the clouds, the remaining four moving here and there below them. Of the four one was clearly out of the fight, for in another moment it turned and veered off in the direction of the French and German lines, sinking slowly as it flew.

“That’s a Boche,” said a voice in Lucy’s ear. Captain Lewis was at her side and, taking the glasses she held, he leveled them at the sky. “Now they are in range again,” he added. “Our men are above in those little Nieuports. The Boches below are in big Fokker battle-planes. They could eat up our little fellows if they could reach them. Luckily the Nieuports can keep above. That fourth who was put out of the game leaves them three to two—pretty close.” Lucy leaned nearer to catch his words, for in his preoccupation he forgot to speak loud enough. A burst of fire from a big German plane made one of the Nieuports veer sharply from its level poise above the enemy. The glasses stiffened in the young officer’s hands, but in a moment the Nieuport righted itself and rose again beside its fellow. From the French trenches anti-aircraft guns were sending shots that burst below the German craft in spouts of flame. But they fell short of the targets, the gunners evidently fearing to hit the little Nieuports so close above them.

As the battle shifted nearer the planes flew over the eastern end of the town. In another five minutes Captain Lewis seized Lucy’s arm, saying, “Come on—come back to the hospital. They may be over us in a moment.” As Lucy, too lost in that terrible and thrilling struggle to even hear his words, stood silent and unheeding he shook her arm and shouted in her ear, “Come on! Look, here’s the patrol come to break up the crowd. You can’t stay here.”

A guard of a dozen French soldiers with a sergeant had arrived to disperse the people, who, oblivious like Lucy to possible danger, still stood gazing spellbound into the sky. Even when ordered with shouts and unceremonious gestures to get under shelter they walked slowly from the spot, turning again and again toward the clouds among which the five planes darted, each pouring a deadly fire upon its enemy.

Lucy got back somehow into the hospital garden, but there she stopped, and Captain Lewis, seeing the planes were not directly overhead, stopped with her. They were not alone, but the few others stood like them in tense silence, watching the two little Nieuports still swooping about their big opponents in quick attack or momentary retreat, and every watcher awaited with eager hopes and prayers the final decision. Lucy’s racing heart beat until her throat ached intolerably and her head began to swim. She clutched at the stone heap that was the gate-post, trying to quiet her panting breath. Suddenly a shout went up around her. One of the big German Fokkers had tilted oddly on its side. One wing was drooping helplessly, its wire supports cut by machine-gun bullets; and now flames darted from the body of the plane and it began to fall. Lucy covered her face with her hands. Then an arm stole around her shoulders and Miss Pearse’s kind voice said in her ear, “Oh, Lucy, don’t tremble so! I know it is awful to see for the first time—but it’s war, you know. And I think the fight is ours!”

Lucy looked up again, not trying to answer. The German plane was gone. A quick stir among the little group told her that things were happening swiftly. At that moment the tide of battle turned.

The two enemy biplanes, unwilling to remain beneath the galling fire of the little Nieuports which hung like deadly hornets above them, had made tremendous efforts to rise to a level with their antagonists. But fast as they rose, the lighter planes rose still faster, until a cloud drove in between Allied and German craft, concealing each from the other. Only the Germans were visible to the watchers below. They evidently saw in the momentary check a good chance of escape and sped off swiftly like great birds through the bright morning air toward the safe shelter of the German lines. A perfect hail of fire from the French and American trenches met them as they passed this perilous frontier. Puffs of smoke and balls of red and yellow fire enveloped them, while from behind the drifting cloud the Nieuports darted in pursuit. But the target was beyond the reach of the anti-aircraft gunners. The German planes sailed majestically on, and the little Nieuports, remembering that discretion is a part of valor, forbore to cross into German territory.

“They’re coming back. They’re quite all right, you see!” cried Captain Lewis at Lucy’s side. From the little group a wild cheer went up at sight of the two daring little scouts returning unharmed from a battle which had cost the enemy dearly without the compensation of a glimpse at the Allies’ defenses.

“They are looking for a place to land,” continued Captain Lewis, his glasses pointed again at the sky. “One fellow has a badly riddled wing. There they come—they are going to land on that big meadow just outside the town, inside our lines.”

As he spoke the Nieuports slowly dropped in a long slanting course until in a moment the hospital towers hid them from sight.

Lucy stirred and sighed as though waking from a dream. Her neck and shoulders ached so she could hardly straighten them, and her eyes were almost blinded by long gazing at the sunny sky. She looked around, blinking, at the little crowd of people who seemed, like herself, slowly coming back to earth to take up their tasks again. The street had once more filled with people, chiefly women who had paused with baskets on their arms, oblivious of what they set out to do. Now they moved on with hurried steps as if trying to overtake the time. Lucy suddenly remembered the face that she had seen watching her with such furtive intentness from among the townspeople in the square. The impression, made at a moment when she was too preoccupied to give it any thought, was too strong to be forgotten. Some one’s eyes had been fixed upon her with a piercing earnestness, but beyond that she had seen nothing—no definiteness of face or figure. In the midst of wondering she remembered her father and ran back at once to the hospital.

Colonel Gordon was awake, lying quietly upon his pillows, his lips set and his eyes keen and thoughtful as the crash of the bombardment struck his ears. At sight of Lucy he smiled and held out a welcoming hand, but the searching look did not fade from his eyes, and his thin face wore some of the old confident determination that Lucy so well remembered. For a moment joy at the change in his appearance overwhelmed her, until the look in his eyes deepened to one of painful anxiety as he said, struggling to make himself heard above the guns:

“You must go, Lucy—you can’t stay here. Where is Cousin Henry?”

Eager to relieve his mind, Lucy shouted, “I’m going, Father—soon! Cousin Henry will be back to-night or to-morrow. Major Greyson says he is held up somewhere. Like Mother, you know—she’s on her way here too. I’m going back to England just as soon as he can take me. Anyway, the Germans haven’t got ahead a bit, and the bombardment is letting up—so Captain Lewis says.” She stopped, breathless, wondering if the firing really had slackened, as in her ears the merciless pounding still continued.

Colonel Gordon’s face remained unchanged, and drawing Lucy down to him he kissed her, saying, “Send Major Greyson to me as soon as he can manage it. You are going back now if it is any way possible.”

Lucy went thoughtfully out into the ward and, meeting Major Greyson, sent him to her father’s room. Then Miss Pearse found her and took her off to lunch, at which she sat down tired and famished.

“I guess you are hungry,” remarked the young nurse, helping her to a steaming ladleful of cabbage soup. “I would lie down a little while after this if I were you,” she added, with a glance at Lucy’s flushed cheeks. “You mustn’t be too tired for your journey back to Calais, for I’m afraid it will be a long and tiresome one.”

She rose from the table as she spoke in answer to a knock at the door. Almost at once she came back saying, “Major Greyson would like to speak to you a minute, Lucy.”

Outside the door the officer gave Lucy a nod of greeting and spoke quickly.

“I wanted to tell you that we have arranged for you to leave here to-morrow morning. One of the nurses sent back for rest to Calais is going too. I can’t stop to give you the details now, but your father will not have you wait for Leslie, in case he does not get here to-night.” He gave an emphatic nod at sight of Lucy’s troubled face. “He’s right, you know. Leslie would have taken you off before this; but things turn up so quickly, one can’t plan everything. Go back and eat your lunch now. I’ll see you later.”

Lucy went back and sat down again, her appetite chased away. Now that departure was really at hand her thoughts and feelings were very conflicting. Longing for the peace of Surrey and its freedom from the terrible sights and sounds about her was mixed with a great and growing sense of pride and satisfaction in her nearness to the heart of the great struggle; in the never-dying hope that she might be of service to the cause she loved so well. Thinking these things she choked down her bread untasted, wishing desperately that her mother would come. Suddenly something struck her ears like a great shock. She started up, gasping, and saw that the nurses had started up likewise, but now they were dropping back into their chairs, with faint smiles of pure relief. In a flash she understood. The bombardment had ceased. Not died away to utter silence, but compared with the ear-splitting din of the night and morning the scattering fire remaining seemed no more than rifle shots.

Miss Pearse said, “Sit down, Lucy. It’s stopped, thank heaven!”

She spoke in her ordinary tone of voice, and Lucy, answering her, did not know how to pitch her own voice and half shouted, uncertain if she could be heard. “Is it all over?” she stammered, wanting to cry, strangely enough, and swallowing hard to keep from it.

“Oh, I don’t know,” was the doubtful reply. “Be thankful, anyhow, that it has stopped for a little while.”

Just the low sound of the voices around the table was a pleasure, after the fragments shouted in each other’s ears so long. It took some minutes to get used to the sudden change—the long continued noise left a great vacancy not at once filled up by ordinary sounds. The nurses hurried through their meal and rose one by one to go back to their duties. Outside the door a nurse whom Lucy did not know had come up and was speaking to Miss Pearse.

“They came down on that biggest hay-field—the one right outside the town,” Lucy heard her saying. “Just two of them. One of the airplanes had a badly cut wing. I stopped to see them as I was coming back from the farmhouse with the orderly, after getting old Mère Breton’s eggs and milk.”

“Who were the aviators? Do you know their names?” interrupted Lucy, forgetting everything but her eagerness.

“Yes,” said the nurse, turning toward her with a pleasant nod and a look of curiosity on her own part at sight of the little stranger. “One of them is Captain Jourdin of the French Flying Corps. The other is an American—Lieutenant Gordon.”

Lucy’s heart gave such a bound she could hardly gasp out to Miss Pearse the wonderful truth.

“Your brother, Lucy?” the nurse exclaimed. “Are you sure? Of course it must be!”

“Oh, I’m sure! There’s not another Gordon in the Aviation Corps. How can I get to him? Who will take me?” cried Lucy, each moment’s delay beyond words unbearable.

“I’ll go with you myself—I can get off for an hour. We’ll have to run all the way,” said Miss Pearse in one hasty breath, Lucy’s wild eagerness awaking instant sympathy in her kind heart. “Wait here until I get permission.”

She was off as she spoke, leaving Lucy standing at the doorway to the garden trying to calm her whirling thoughts and to realize the truth of the happy chance that had come to her. So it had really been Bob all the time whom she had watched with such desperate hope and fear as he fought for his life in the clouds above her! At that moment it seemed days and days since she had risen from troubled dreams to the thunder of the guns that morning.

Miss Pearse came up behind her saying, “All right—come on!”

Together they ran through the garden and out into the street. It was a mile to the big level meadow just east of Château-Plessis, through streets heaped with fallen stones and rubbish, the houses scarred and battered by flying shrapnel, and here and there collapsed in utter ruin.

As Lucy ran on tirelessly, looking only to the goal ahead, thoughts raced tumultuously through her excited brain until her father, mother, Bob and William, the past and the uncertain present, were jumbled together into a maze of doubt and wondering. Only to see Bob—to talk to him—somehow everything would then be straightened out. She thought of Captain Jourdin. What ages since she had bound up his injured hand on Governor’s Island. For two months now he had been back in the French Service and Bob’s letters had told her of his new and brilliant exploits. How Bob had dreamed of having a part in all this, that was now coming true! With a rush of strange happiness Lucy felt that she herself had now a part in it as well. For a moment she had forgotten the leave-taking so near at hand.

“Tired, Lucy?” asked Miss Pearse, slowing up to catch her breath. “We’re almost there.”

The streets became lanes as they neared the outskirts of Château-Plessis. The houses thinned to scattered cottages set among neglected gardens—almost all empty and forlorn, for this side of the town had been most exposed during the bombardment which ended in its capture. In another few moments they passed the last house of the lane and, beyond what was left of a grove of bright green poplars, opened a wide grassy meadow. It stretched with several others, in broad undulating lines as far as the wood which lay between the fields and the French trenches. The nearest meadow was a favorite landing-place for aviators scouting above the town.

A few hundred yards to the left a little crowd of people had gathered around two airplanes resting on the grass. At sight of them Miss Pearse and Lucy both cried out with the little breath left them. For a second they stood still, panting aloud, with crimson cheeks and hair stuck in damp wisps to their hot foreheads. Then they ran on to the edge of the crowd which had collected close about the aviators, eager to offer help and friendly greetings.

Bob Gordon was standing by one of the planes, his hands full of tools. His gloves and helmet he had flung upon the grass, but now his work was done, and he stood idly by while his companion put the finishing touches to the repair of his bullet-riddled wing. Bob’s face was hot and streaked with oil and dust to the roots of his brown hair. His sunburned cheeks were thinner than when he had left West Point less than a year ago. He looked calm and self-reliant beyond his years, his whole lean figure filled with energy and decision. He was not yet twenty-one, but to Lucy he seemed a boy no longer.

The crowd made way for her in astonishment as she begged and pushed her panting way among them. Then Bob turned at the disturbance and caught sight of her. His face was a study of unbelieving wonder and delight as he let fall the tools and sprang to meet her. Lucy flung her arms about his neck and he hugged her so close he could feel her heart beating as she fought for breath. For a moment neither of them spoke a word, Lucy too breathless and Bob too overcome. Around them the friendly little crowd broke into delighted cries of sympathy and pleasure. Captain Jourdin lifted astonished eyes from his forgotten work, and Miss Pearse, with swimming head and parching throat, dropped down upon the grass.

“Lucy! You!” said Bob at last, drawing back from his little sister and holding both her hands to look into her face. “You’re here at Château-Plessis!” Still he seemed almost incredulous, and his eyes wandered over Lucy, while he held her hands, as though he thought his eyes had tricked him.

“Oh, Bob, how are you?” Lucy faltered, getting her breath at last, but struggling desperately with the strangling emotion that caught her at sight of her brother. September, 1917—how long ago that seemed since she had said good-bye to him that morning at Governor’s Island. And what dreadful days they had been through since then!

Bob pulled her down beside him on the grass with an eager, searching look into her face. “How is Father? Tell me that first.”

“He’s better—truly, Bob—much better,” Lucy answered quickly.

“He’s safe—he will get well?” Bob whispered, and Lucy, seeing the lines of anxiety that had chased away the smile about his lips and the look of tired suffering in his eyes, almost choked before she managed to say, “Oh, Bob dear, he’s safe! He talks to me just like himself. He made me promise to go back to England to-morrow.”

“THIS MEADOW IS THE BEST LANDING-PLACE”

“And Mother—where is she?” Bob asked, after a moment’s silent thankfulness. Lucy’s words had brought back a little of the old brightness to his face. He spoke hurriedly in sudden realization of the short time they had together. Then, as Lucy shook her head, he added, “I had telegrams, you know. One reached me at Cantigny from Cousin Henry saying you had come to Father and that he had improved a little. But of course the name of the town was suppressed, so I didn’t know where you were. If I could have come myself I should have learned at General Headquarters where Father was. But I never thought to drop down on the lucky spot like this! I was here before, you know, nearly a month ago—before the Germans took the town. This meadow is the best landing-place around here.”

The little crowd of people had dwindled, some moving off to leave brother and sister alone together, for Miss Pearse had been questioned until every one there knew the story of Bob and Lucy’s meeting. Others, too interested to go, still stood watching with smiling faces, and neither Bob nor Lucy minded them. But in another moment Lucy sprang up from the grass and held out her hand to Captain Jourdin. He took it with a quick bow, his face lighting up as he returned her greeting, in a voice deeply touched with friendly feeling.

“Welcome to France, Miss Lucie! I never thought to see you here.”

There was no use trying to put into words the strangeness of their meeting. Lucy tried to say a little of what she felt, and could not. Looking into the Frenchman’s fine grave face she saw again the snow-covered land by the sea-wall on Governor’s Island, herself and William standing beside a sled and Captain Jourdin getting out of his stranded airplane and limping toward them. She had told him that day of Bob’s imprisonment, hoping against hope that he could give her encouragement of some sort for his safety. She glanced involuntarily at his wrist, and he smiled and held it up, saying, “You see, it is quite all right again, Captain Lucy!”

“You are back in the service—that’s better than anything, isn’t it?” she said at last, and his eyes, lighting up at her words, told her the depth of his satisfaction.

“I shall not soon forget that American surgeon,” he answered softly. “He gave me back to France.”

“Lucy,” said Bob suddenly from behind her, “a fellow I just spoke with here says the American hospital is not a mile away. I’m going to see Father. I can run all the way. How about it, Jourdin? Will you wait half an hour?”

“But certainly! the firing has almost ceased,” was the willing answer. “We shall have a quiet night, so it appears. I will stay here on guard until you return.”

“Lucy, don’t try to run again—you’ll kill yourself,” urged Bob, putting his arm about his little sister’s shoulders and giving her an involuntary hug. “Stay here, and I’ll be back as soon as possible. This man who told me where the hospital was will take me there.”

“I can run, Bob, but of course you can go faster alone,” said Lucy reluctantly, hating to lose her brother for any of these precious moments. “Go on—Father will love so to see you,” she added quickly. “And then you will know yourself that he is really getting well.”

Her words were hardly spoken when the heavy crashing boom of a cannon broke the quiet of the German lines. Other shots followed before the screaming shell had burst. At once from the wood in front of the meadows the French and American guns replied. The bursting German shells increased in number, and now once more a thunderous din reëchoed through the quivering air.

Speechless with despairing terror, Lucy threw her arms about Bob’s neck, and he held her while he shouted in her ear, “It’s on again—I can’t go now! Buck up there, Captain!”

The old name roused Lucy’s sinking courage. She stood erect and dazedly saw the little crowd around them fast dispersing, Captain Jourdin putting away the tools and picking up his helmet, and Miss Pearse running quickly to her side. She did not hear the words the nurse shouted, but she heard Captain Jourdin speaking hastily to Bob. “——to get back to the squadron before the fire grows hotter—no time to lose—we shall be needed if the German lines are stiffening before the town——” These fragments caught her ear. She understood, too, that Bob was in greater danger if he delayed, and that was enough to make her forget everything else. She put her arms about his neck again and said a brief good-bye, hoping the shake in her voice was drowned by the cannon.

The next moment Bob was seated in his plane, leaning down to her for a final leave-taking. A mechanic from the town stood ready by the propeller. Captain Jourdin was in his own machine, and now he turned to Lucy, raising his hand in a farewell gesture that seemed to speak his own dauntless courage. In another moment he was off down the meadow like a skimming bird. Bob’s last words were quickly spoken.

“Give lots of love to Father—and Cousin Henry. You’ll go back to England to-morrow?” he shouted. Lucy had not even had time to tell him Mr. Leslie was not there. He nodded to the man at the propeller, then turned to Lucy once more. “Do you know whom I saw in Château-Plessis a month ago—might—here—still!” The roaring propeller drowned his words.

“Bob—what?” begged Lucy, straining her ears as she leaped back from the machine, but Bob could not hear her either. She saw his lips move, though not a sound came from them. But he thought she understood and with a last nod and smile which he tried hard to make cheerful, for that lonely little figure standing there brought an aching pang to his heart, he pressed forward his control stick and sped off down the field.

Side by side Miss Pearse and Lucy watched the two Nieuports rise into the air over the wood, soaring far above the bursting shells. Then they turned and with one accord ran swiftly toward the town, while the thundering guns shook the earth beneath their feet.