Philip, who sat leaning against a tree, with his arm around Jean, softly stroked the lad’s dark head. Somehow he had shown more than the usual interest in the little refugee, undoubtedly drawn to him in recognition of the fact that he was also a victim of German barbarity, and because they both spoke the same language. Nathalie, with a thrill of joy, had noticed his tender, protecting watchfulness over the boy, and how Jean’s big eyes would gaze up at the young man with a gleam in their depths like that of some adoring dog, who yearns for the hand of his master in silent caress!

“There is not much to tell,” returned Philip after a pause, with the hesitancy of one who dislikes to talk about himself, “for you must know I am no hero.” He smiled at the girlish faces so eagerly watching him. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, unconsciously pushing Jean from him. “I am an American,” he exclaimed abruptly, “for my father came of good old New England stock, although I was born in the South. But my heart has been strangely stirred since I came over here, for the Americans are asleep,—they do not sense what they are up against in this war of the nations.” His dark gray eyes flashed into flame. “Sometimes I feel I would like to be another Paul Revere, and ride like the wind, knocking on doors and windows, shouting to the slumberers, ‘The Huns are coming!’ They must be roused to the truth that this war is their war, and that they have not buckled to their job.”

He paused a moment, the fire dying out of his eyes as he continued, “I was feeling in unusually good spirits that summer of 1914, for I had just formed a partnership with a well-known architect, and business gave assurance of giving me a very comfortable income, and place me in a position to repay my mother, who had denied herself in order to put me through college.

“Into this mood of complacent satisfaction with myself and world in general, came a jar one day in June when the newspapers announced, in glaring headlines, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. And, almost before we had digested its portent, came Austria’s ultimatum to little Serbia. People began to grow restive, alarm-fired, keyed to a tense state of expectancy that something was in the air, but—what? Then tongues were loosened and eyes flashed fire as the Prime Minister’s scathing denunciation of Germany’s ‘infamous proposal’ was bandied from mouth to mouth, followed by Great Britain’s ultimatum that Belgium’s neutrality must be respected. “Then came hours of anxious suspense, a harrowing waiting-time, with every one’s heart aquiver, while a little group of men in Downing Street held their watches in their hands as they awaited Germany’s reply. It came. The deep-toned clang of Big Ben told to English hearts that the world’s decades of peace had been shattered, and that the Prussian barbarians had struck their first blow at civilization.

“From every corner and window now glared forth, ‘Your King and your Country need you.’ Those words seared my heart like fire, but no, I argued, I must make good with mother. But no matter how I tried to cajole myself, the words seemed to follow me around like an accusing finger. No, he wasn’t my king. I was an American by right of birth, but still they blazoned at me until I could see them with my eyes shut. They starred the darkness of night; why, even in my sleep they clutched me in a ghostly dream. The next day and for many days I saw them aflame on the pavement, they were written on the sky in white letters, but still I fought.

“When England’s young manhood sprang, as it were, from the earth, armed to the teeth, and marched shoulder to shoulder in regular beat,—it seemed like the pulsation of my own heart—as they swung along through the streets of London, my head swam, my throat tightened, and—But when I read of heroic little Belgium so nobly holding out against the ruthless destroyer of justice and honor, I gave in and became one of Kitchener’s mob.

“Those were not pleasant hours,” continued Philip, “waiting at the Horse Guard Parade to read when I must report at the regimental depot at Hounslow, for I felt I was a misfit, in with a lot of men that, to my inexperienced eyes, seemed the scum of England, and I sickened of my job.

“But when the news continued to pour in that LiÈge had fallen, that the Germans had entered Brussels, that the British Expeditionary Forces were retreating, heroically fighting, that Namur, Louvain, and other towns were being ruthlessly seized and devastated by the enemy, and their hellish atrocities began to be rumored about, the past, together with all hopes and desires for the future, were wiped out as clean as a slate in a spirit of forgetfulness. I lived in the moment, buoyed by the grim determination to fight like hell to down the oppressor of men’s rights, to lose my life if need be, in order to give freedom to those who were to come after.

“My spirits took a leap when I registered at the Hounslow Barracks as a Royal Fusileer, although I grinned humorously, for if I had felt like a misfit in London I was a guy now, appareled like a bloomin’ lay-figure in the cast-off rags of some old-clothes shop, and had sensed that I was only a steel rivet in a big machine. I was no duck either, taking to the drills like water, for I would stand hopelessly bewildered at the sharp orders, ‘Form fours! One-one-two! Platoon! Form Fours!’ and similar commands, that were like kicks on a befuddled brain. But I gritted my teeth and stuck to my guns.

“As soon as my rawness wore off and I began to get the hang of it, the martial spirit asserted itself. I began to be obsessed by the desire to show that I was the right stuff, that the heroism of my American ancestors, the spirit of ’76, was in me. Through all my intensive training I was feverishly eager to know every detail of company and battalion drill, musketry and target-practice, and all the daily grind of the other sundry factors in military discipline.

“When I began to ‘matey’ my comrades, I soon understood why a Tommy Atkins is not like an American, who is born with a fine sense of personal independence, and who feels that he is as good as any Lord or Duke; or like a volatile Frenchman, with his easy grace of manner and buoyant spirit. I realized that although there may be a ‘Sentimental Tommy’ here and there, the average Tommy Atkins is a stolid chap, humdrum and prosaic, but with as kind a heart as any rookie in the world.

“As spring came along, after months of soldiering in many different quarters, which meant roughing it in leaky tents where cold, rain, and mud played a large part, and poor equipment a larger, we were no longer raw rookies, parading or drilling before an unadmiring public,—a target for pretty girls’ laughter, or the ire of a berating sergeant,—for our battalion had acquired a high degree of efficiency.

“Our arms were one with us, we had done with squad, platoon formation, and company drills, had shown our metal at the rifle-range at Aldershot, taken part in field maneuvers, bayonet charges, and mimic battles. We had become experts at trench-digging, bomb-throwing, and sniping, while the machine-gunners were quite up to the mark in that important weapon; in fact, we had become familiar with all branches of the army service.

“Then when every man was ‘in the pink’ the marching orders came, and we assembled on the barrack-square at Aldershot. Not only were we physically fit, fine specimens of the trained soldier, but we were completely equipped, even to the identification tag, which registered your name, regimental number, regiment, and religion; besides, we carried the first-aid field dressing,—an antiseptic gauze pad and bandage, and a small bottle of iodine. Also, each soldier carried a copy of Lord Kitchener’s letter, as to what was expected of every British soldier. The words ‘Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honor your King,’ meant much to me, although I was an American.

“And then we were off, merry and blithe, no matter what our hearts registered, cheering like fiends when some of the boys in khaki chalked the gun-carriages ‘at Berlin,’ a new challenge to each Tommy to do his stunt in making the Huns pay. Then came a drifting period when we were herded like cattle from one train to another, or made long, weary marches in the blind,—for nobody seemed to know our destination. But at last we were in the shadow of the great battle, down in the earth, in one sector of a long line of a serpentine trench, zigzagging from the sea to the Alps.

“This burrowing underground like a mole, digging trenches, or holes, in No Man’s Land, to string up barbed wire entanglements, or to pile sand-bags on the parapet, or to clean out the wreckage of a trench that had been battered by German gunners, or a trench-mortar—sometimes to gather up the pieces of some ‘matey’ whom you had chummed with,—all meant new activities. They were experiences and sounds—the sounds of hell—and sights that cut deep, with an impelling remembrance haunting you like grewsome shadows.

“Yes, it was a strange new life,” the young soldier paused musingly, “for this kind of fighting is no battlefield with glittering helmets and bayonets, the furling of colors, the prancing of horses, the roll of gun-carriages, but stinging eyelids and a choking in thick gray smoke, with the roar of cannonading, the sharp screech of shrapnel, the bursting of star-shells, or the whir of strange, queer monsters above your head. “There was the turning of night into day,”—Philip’s face had a weary expression,—“the daily mental strain, the danger constantly facing you, the learning to know the sounds of the different shells and in what direction they were going to fall. Involuntarily, with stilled breath, you waited, and then came the sinking of your heart when you sensed that it was your turn now, and then to find yourself still there, but to realize that some of your mates had ‘gone West.’

“And the gas. Oh, the horror of the great, greenish balls that came rolling towards you, close to the earth, the celerity of getting into your gas-masks, and the horrible thing that a comrade became if he failed to accomplish this job on time, and lay writhing in an ugly, venomous atmosphere of green.

“Then there were the cooties, the parasites that feed on you, and with whom you maintain a constant warfare,” Philip smiled as he saw the girls squirm; “and the rats, as big as cats, with sharp, ferret-like eyes, darting from some dark crevice, or playing leap-frog over your legs at night, or mistaking your head for their nest. Ugh! But the dead-and-gone feeling—exhausted nature asserting her rights—which assailed you at some critical moment, perhaps when you were trying to be a man at your job, just got you through and through.

“Ah, there was the first ‘over-the-top’ experience, when you stood on the fire-step with gun in hand, palefaced, but with clenched teeth, in an oppressive silence, waiting to hear the command come down the line,—whispered from mouth to mouth. Then you leaped wildly over into long-anticipated perils, to become entangled in barbed wire, or perhaps to get your first shock, as the man next you dropped like lead at the first ‘ptt’ of a German sharpshooter’s bullet.

“But on you rush in a mad frenzy with red-misted eyes, in the face of a heavy artillery fire and a pitiless gale of shrapnel, through a dense smoke-screen, split with lurid flashes of flame, over a ground pitted with shell-holes—to stumble over some dead Tommy, whose glazed eyes stare up at you as if in mockery of your determination to play the man in this crusade for humanity.

“Then my adventure came,—a raid on a German trench, an undertaking attended with great peril. With blackened faces, each man, with his bag of bombs and automatic, at the flicker of a white light crawled stealthily into the sable blackness of ‘dead man’s yard,’ and, in a downpour of drenching rain, crept on hands and knees, sometimes wiggling on his stomach,—quickly rolling into a shell-hole if a sound was heard,—until the German trench loomed menacingly only a few feet beyond.

“Everything was deadly still. Then the signal came, and with a rush we clambered stealthily up and peeped over, to see a yellow-haired Heinie asleep in the little alcove back of his gun-emplacement, the head of the sentry-on-post tipsily nodding on his chest, and two big fellows snoring like porpoises on the floor near. In just one minute we had slid into that trench and had our men with hands up. Sure it was a surprise-party for Fritz, for the Germans came running out of their dug-outs, wrapped in blankets, noisily demanding to know what was up. They soon knew, and then came a riot of a time as we let our hand-grenades fly, and our bayonets too, aided by a lively fire from our machine-guns. And then we were out, making a quick run for our own trenches with our trophies, and several of the surprised ones, with the German guns thundering in our rear.

“Yes, I had captured my first Hun, and mighty proud I was of my achievement, and pictured my delight-to-be when retailing my adventure to my comrades, when Zipp! and I was downed by the pieces of a bursting shell that got me in the hand and foot. And the prisoner? Oh, the dirty Boche saw his chance. I saw his hand go up,—he must have had a stiletto hidden somewhere,—but I was too quick for him for I let fly a hand-grenade, and—well, he bothered me no more.

“For hours I crawled, or wiggled, along, dropping into a chalk-pit or a shell-hole every few moments, for it was like hell under that liquid fire, Fritzie’s aËrial bombs and the machine-gun fire; in fact, it seemed as if every kind of projectile had been let loose, for now the Germans were mad clean through. Finally, being too exhausted to make any further headway, I crept into a shell-hole, where I lay for a day and a night, lying on my face most of the time, playing dead, for the German fiends would sneak out into No Man’s Land at night after a bombardment, and kill every wounded enemy soldier they could find.

“What did I think about, you ask, Miss Nathalie, while lying in that shell-hole?” Philip smiled a little sadly. “Well, at first I was crazed with thirst and hunger, and the cold—oh, it was something fierce. And then the doubts and misgivings that had assailed me at times, as to whether there was a God in heaven, returned with renewed force. I dumbly felt that my faith was leaving me, for why this useless slaughter of men’s bodies, this agonizing devil’s gas, this torturing of the aged and weak, this violating of womanhood, this maiming of little, innocent children? Ah, the agony of body was nothing compared to the agony of my soul, as I lay in that hole.

“Then that night—there was no moon, and everything was a dead calm, for a lull had come in fighting—I turned over, face upward, to ease the aching that racked my body. As I lie gazing up at the stars,—they seemed unusually bright,—something white suddenly flashed before me, and then I saw a face bend down and gaze at me. It was a marvelously beautiful face, with such calm serenity of expression as the eyes smiled into mine, that a strange peace came into my soul, my pains were eased, I was filled with a wonderful joy, and—then I knew;—it was the face of the Great White Comrade,—the face of Christ!

“It may have been a delusion from overwrought nerves,—I may have been dreaming,—I don’t know, for there had been great talk among the soldiers of seeing the white apparition of Christ on the battlefield. He was said to have appeared to the soldiers, showed them His bleeding side and hands, and then the suffering ones had felt a wonderful peace come into their souls, and their very agonies had made them triumphant in the thought that as He had died to make men holy, so He had given them the great privilege of suffering and dying to make men free. No, I didn’t see any bleeding side, or the nail-prints on the hands, but I saw Christ’s face, and, oh, it was Heaven!

“Then my brain cleared. I realized that I had been groping in a great darkness, but that a wonderful light had come, and I knew God was in His Heaven. That smile had brought revelation. It had told me that we were no better than Christ, and He had suffered,—He, an innocent soul. And as He had agonized on the cross, and God had suffered with Him, so every moan, sob, and cry had reached His ears in this great wail from humanity. It told me that this bruising of bodies, this rending of women’s hearts, this wringing of men’s souls, had wrung His heart with a suffering greater than men could know.

“It told me that it was all the working-out of God’s great plan for the good of mankind. It told me that the men, women, and children, who had passed through these seas of blood were to come forth with white garments, to be a great host led by the Angel of His Presence, and that their deeds were to live after them, to bring light into the dark places in men’s souls. It told me that these blood-soaked battlefields were to become gardens, where flowers would spring, the glorious flowers of freedom, and that every tear shed was to become great waters, to flow like a river of peace to all nations.”

As Philip ceased speaking, the faces of his young listeners became very grave, and for a moment there was an impressive stillness, as if each one had been hushed to a reverent silence. “Well, after that, I was strangely happy,” continued the young man slowly. “I think I must have fallen asleep, for I was suddenly aroused by the cold snout of a dog nosing into my face. He was a little beast, not much bigger than Tige here,” softly stroking the refugee’s yellow dog as he spoke, at which Jean’s eyes grew soft and bright, for with the lad it was “Love me, love my dog.”

“Yes, it was a Red Cross dog, whose beautiful eyes seemed almost human as they told me that help was near, and—” Philip stopped abruptly. He had had a weary, tired look for some time, but now a sudden pallor overspread his face, and Janet, who had been watching him nervously, stepped quickly to his side, crying, “And now you must stop talking, Mr. de Brie, for you are overdoing.”

Philip smiled into her blue eyes, but waved her aside as he cried, sitting up with sudden resolution, “But no, you must let me finish my story.”

“Oh, yes, do let him finish his story!” came a chorus of eager voices.

But at this moment Nathalie, whose face had suddenly brightened, cried, “Oh, no; let’s wait, for a big idea has suddenly come to me, and,” the girl’s eyes sparkled, “if it turns out all right it will add to our enjoyment if we wait to hear Mr. de Brie’s story some other time.”

“A big idea,” cried Nita, all aquiver with curiosity. “Oh, Nathalie, do tell us what it is!”

“No, not now,” answered the girl. “It will keep; but in the meantime let us have a story from Mr. Darrell. You know he promised to tell us about Lovewell, the Ranger, and now is his chance, and we are not going to let him off.”