Six weeks of imprisonment had brought few changes to Bob, and those few were not of a pleasant sort. The only bright spot in the dark monotony of his life was Sergeant Cameron's companionship, for repeated requests had finally obtained it for him, in a qualified degree. His captors had no objection to the sergeant's waiting on the American officer in place of a German orderly, so after the usual hesitation and delay, Sergeant Cameron was allowed to visit Bob and attend to his simple wants in the short periods during which the doors remained unlocked. Bob still shared Bertrand's room, and most of Sergeant Cameron's ministrations were by now directed, together with Bob's, to making the unfortunate officer as comfortable as possible. The two or three weeks which were to elapse before his transfer to better quarters had lengthened to five, and still the fever came and went, each time leaving the patient sufferer thinner, weaker, and less able to fight for his life. As Bob knelt beside his cot one cold, dark morning, with a bowl of coffee in his hands, he turned a weary, anxious face to Sergeant Cameron, who was trying to blow the few sticks on the hearth into a lively blaze.

"It's no use, Sergeant," he said, sombrely. "I can't make him take anything. He won't be roused at all. Confound that doctor! He hasn't been near us in three days."

"He's off at another camp, sir, so I heard from the guard," said the sergeant, pausing in his work to look at Captain Bertrand's flushed and unconscious face as he lay heavily breathing. "I think he'll be along to-day. He has more to do than he can manage, but he seems a pretty good sort, for a Boche."

Bob gave a grunt of angry helplessness. "Then why doesn't he get this poor fellow moved? Can't he see that he's dying on his hands? I don't care if their hospitals are jammed with wounded—one Frenchman is worth a dozen of them!"

Bob spoke with a bitterness that was new to him, and his frowning brows did not unknit themselves as he rose from the floor, carefully drawing the blanket over Bertrand's shoulders. Sergeant Cameron finished mending the fire in thoughtful silence. The old soldier had suffered heavy disappointment in being captured and removed from the fighting line so early in the struggle, during a trifling raid on a bit of exposed German trench. Since then, too, he had known hard privation in the prison camp, but at least half of the anxiety and depression that had paled his ruddy face was for the son of his old Major, whose every word and gesture showed the strain of indignation, hunger, and rigid confinement unwillingly borne. He could not do much to alleviate Bob's misery, but stories of Major Gordon's old regiment, which had been honored by an early place in the first line trenches, were always welcome to Bob's ears, and even a little talk would sometimes cheer him, for he was too young to be gloomy all the time.

"They say there's been a big British advance, Lieutenant," he began, rubbing his blackened fingers against each other as he turned from the hearth. "There's a new lot of prisoners come in early this morning. They're in the next barrack to me, so I'll have a word with them if possible at dinner-time."

"What did you hear? Where was the push made?" Bob asked, his eager interest smoothing out the wrinkles in his forehead and giving him back his boyish look. He was standing by the table, stirring a bit of bread in his bowl of acorn coffee.

"It was near a place the French call Cam-berray, or something like that," said the sergeant, diffidently. "The advance was led by General Byng. I got that much last night through a knot-hole in the wall, from a Frenchman who's chummy with me and speaks a bit of English."

"Cambrai, I guess," exclaimed Bob, forgetting his breakfast as he stared into space with thoughtful eyes. "I wonder how much it means!"

"Don't know, sir, but I'll find out all I can," promised the sergeant, relieved to see the look of bitter depression gone for the moment from Bob's face. "They can't prevent the men talking together a good bit—we're so crowded up like, in our barrack."

The last two weeks had brought a crowd of French and British prisoners to the camp until it was filled to overflowing. But with every new arrival, rumor stole about that the Germans on the western front had paid a deadly price for each man captured, and that a far greater number of soldiers from the German lines were in the hands of the Allies.

But this was as much good news as Bob and Sergeant Cameron could summon to cheer them. No letters had reached them, nor any news that their own had been sent on. They might have been on a desert island for all the communication they could obtain with America. The little money Bob had hoarded was spent at last, and he suffered greatly from the monotonous and meagre diet. His repeated requests for advances of money from the Commandant had met with no reply, and he had long since ceased to expect any.

Sergeant Cameron at first had put a cheerful interpretation on this indifference and neglect of the prisoners. "It's plain they are hard up, Lieutenant," he said hopefully, "for they can't spare us a word or a thought. They have to keep the war going at all costs."

"I think they just don't care what becomes of us," returned Bob, in one of his hopeless moments. He had nerved himself to endure his captivity bravely, but the everlasting monotony and privation were harder for his active nature to bear than the fiercest battle. A letter from home, telling him that they knew where he was and trusted to his pluck and endurance would have done wonders for him, but none took the trouble to forward a letter into the heart of Prussia, to a prisoner from the nation that Germany now hated even beyond her hate for England—because it had foiled her imagined victory.

However, no one who is in reasonable health and not suffering keenly can be miserable all day long. At any rate Bob could not, and the fits of brooding that worried Sergeant Cameron did not last more than an hour or two. After breakfast Bob went outside and took a walk along his wired-in alley in the not very cheerful company of a British colonel who had recently been captured and couldn't get over the exasperating annoyance of being taken away just when he was most needed. He occupied Bob's old room and met his advances with friendliness, but had not recovered spirits enough to do more than talk about the beastly bad luck of his having managed to run right against that Boche patrol. Bob told him the rumors of General Byng's advance and awakened a spark of real interest in the Britisher, as well as another burst of anger at his own impotence.

"To think I might have been there!" exclaimed the captive colonel with longing eyes, a flush coming over his lean, weather-worn cheek. "We're out of luck, young fellow, and that's the truth—but I had some of it, at any rate."

"Yes," sighed Bob, vague thoughts of some desperate attempt at escape floating through his mind, to be impatiently dismissed at sight of the endless sentries patrolling their lengths of wire alleys. "A kangaroo with a machine gun might get away," he thought idly, "but I certainly can't."

The sun had not appeared for the past two days, hiding behind thick, gray clouds which gave a melancholy tone to the dreary winter landscape. Bob felt inclined to blame it as being a Prussian sun and unsympathetic to shivering young Americans whose fire-wood was not furnished in sufficient quantities. But it peeped out, mistily, an hour later when Bob went back to Bertrand, hoping for a change in his comrade's heavy, feverish stupor. The sick man still lay with closed eyes, breathing fast and hard, but as Bob approached him, his lids flickered open and his bright eyes fixed themselves upon Bob's face.

"A little water, comrade," he murmured, the ghost of his old graciousness of manner lingering in his feeble voice.

Bob rejoiced at his words, his first sensible utterance in many hours, and hastened to obey his request. As he bent over the bed, raising the Frenchman's thin frame with one arm to hold the water to his hot lips, Bertrand whispered, "You have been a friend, mon garÇon,—many thanks, while I have breath to say it!" He panted as he spoke, but his bright eyes turned to Bob's with a glance of affectionate gratitude, and their intelligence was for the moment unclouded. "If I must die in prison—in an enemy's country—it is something, comrade, to have your friendly face so near at hand. We are true Allies,—France and America."

He fell back gasping, while Bob, his own eyes blurred with quick tears of pity and understanding, dipped a handkerchief in the cold water and laid it over Bertrand's burning forehead.

"You're not going to die," he said, doggedly, though his voice was choked as he spoke and his grim face belied his hopeful words. "I'm going to get that doctor now, if I have to storm the Commandant in his own den." This he announced with a determination that took no thought as yet of ways and means.

He rose from beside the cot, where Bertrand lay exhausted after his battle for breath to speak with, and strode toward the door. Outside he could hear the prisoners marching toward the kitchen and the German guard was unlocking the officers' rooms for dinner. Bob waited for his own door to open, his purpose unwavering to demand attention for Bertrand's desperate need, no matter what retribution any violence might bring upon himself. He did not intend to wait for a word with Sergeant Cameron, but rapidly pieced together his German to address the guard as soon as the door opened. But when it did open, Bob's set face wavered almost to a smile with the quick relief of it. He would not have to engage just then, anxious and hungry as he was, on the doubtful struggle with the powers above him, for behind the guard stood the short, alert figure of the doctor, wrapped in a gray uniform overcoat, his face reddened by the frosty air.

Bob felt almost as though the German were a friend as he stepped eagerly forward, fearful lest he should somehow escape him, saying, "Doctor, thank Heaven you've come! Captain Bertrand is very ill. Why haven't you had him taken away?"

The touch of indignation in his last words was acknowledged by the German with a slight shrug of the shoulders as he stepped inside the room and laid his medicine case on the table. "I cannot perform the impossible," he said shortly, giving a keen glance in Bertrand's direction. "He is not the only sick man in Germany."

Bob checked his resentment at this cool retort, and gave all his attention to helping the doctor make the sick man more comfortable. It was evident to both of them that there was little to be done, for the medicine case was not able to furnish the doctor with what he wanted, and Bertrand, sunk again into feverish slumber, gave no answer to the questions put to him. At last the German put on his gloves and prepared to take leave, but before doing so he forestalled Bob's obvious intention of protesting against Bertrand's remaining any longer in the prison by saying irritably:

"Yes, yes! He shall be moved. Soon, too—he has been here far too long already." He glanced at Bob with a look of angry dissatisfaction, whether at the young American himself, the sick man, or the German medical staff's mismanagement, Bob did not know; but after a curt nod he departed, leaving Bob in a state of painful uncertainty during the few moments he passed alone with Bertrand before Sergeant Cameron brought in his meagre noonday meal.

Just what the doctor meant to do Bob was far from feeling sure, and Sergeant Cameron had little to say, after his five weeks' experience with German promises which lacked the merit of ever being performed.

At five o'clock that afternoon Bob heard the guard at his door, and rising from a dreary revery by Bertrand's side, he went to meet him. Sergeant Cameron was due with his supper and Bob was anxious for a word with him. Their patient was still just lingering on the borderland of unconsciousness. Sergeant Cameron was not yet there, but behind the guard came four soldiers, stretcher-bearers, who advanced stolidly into the little room with their unwieldy burden.

Bob's heart gave a sudden strange pang. The longed-for relief had come, but it was not so easy now to see his comrade of the long weeks just passed go out among strangers, too ill to wish him even a word of farewell. Almost dazed he stood aside, while the doctor followed in the stretcher-bearers' wake, and ordered the French officer lifted from the cot. Then Bob sprang forward and helped with gentle hands that shook a little as he adjusted the blankets for the last time over his friend's thin shoulders. He said huskily to the doctor, "You'll do your best for him, won't you, Herr Doctor?"

The German gave a nod of assent, but said nothing more. He gave Bob an odd glance once or twice, and seemed more than ordinarily severe and constrained, giving the soldiers short, sharp orders which they made haste to obey. Bob said no more to him, and in another moment Bertrand had been carried out, and he was left alone.

He sat down, looking at the empty cot, and mumbled angrily to himself, in the midst of his black depression, "Don't be an ass. Buck up! What a slacker you are, anyway—can't you grin and bear it, as other fellows do?" And all the while he was wondering painfully at his own weakness, and despising it, yet utterly unable to rise above it, or to take his imprisonment courageously as only one of the many evil chances of war. When Sergeant Cameron came in at last he was still struggling with himself, and not even the sergeant's cheerful words of thankfulness that poor Bertrand was at last to be placed in competent hands—or so they hoped—could bring a ray of brightness to Bob's weary brain. He drank some of his bitter coffee and went to bed—free for the first time in weeks to sleep the night through without rising to see if Bertrand slept—but this night he lay awake and wished for even the sick man's companionship.

When the first streaks of dawn stole through the little window Bob sat up and looked curiously at the ashes on the hearth. His fire was out—that was the curious part of it, because he was not cold, though the window pane was covered with frost and his breath puffed into vapor.

"I'm hot—hot as anything," he muttered, rubbing one hand over his aching forehead. "Funny, for I was cold enough all night." He lay down again to ponder it.

When Sergeant Cameron came with his breakfast Bob was still lying on the cot. The sergeant laid down the bowl of coffee and the armful of wood he carried to look keenly at the young officer's flushed checks, as he lay blanketless in the cold room. "Don't feel well, Lieutenant?" he faltered, trying to speak naturally, but reaching for Bob's hand as he spoke and starting at the burning dryness of it.

"Queer," said Bob, trying to emerge from the dim, feverish phantoms that obscured his thoughts, "but I'll be better after a while." He spoke more cheerfully than he had done the night before. All present worries had suddenly faded from his mind. He could not seem to think of anything but what was very vague and far away.

The next few days, during which Bob grew steadily worse, were hard almost beyond endurance to Sergeant Cameron's anxious and devoted spirit. He stayed tirelessly by Bob's bedside, until the German guards grew weary of ordering him away and let him be. Never did a sick man receive more faithful care or more earnest watching, and the doctor, at his rare visits, looked curiously more than once at the pale, unshaven, eager face of the old "non-com," as though he wondered at such persistent faithfulness.

Bob was not suffering just then. For the first time in many weeks he was free, and his hot aching body, lying on the narrow cot, did not much trouble the real self that was back again on the firing line, hovering over the German trenches in Benton's biplane, or swooping back to safety from pursuing guns. In quiet moments, when Sergeant Cameron fell into a doze by his bedside, Bob dreamed he was back in his barrack room at West Point, planning his graduation leave. Then Lucy's face would come before him and her voice sound in his ears. His mother's eyes would smile at him, with their old cheerfulness, and the war seemed very dreadful, but very dim and far away.

Once, after a long time during which he had lain still, not even dreaming, too weary and weak to do more than lie dully half-asleep, Bob opened his eyes with a sudden clearing of his senses. Voices were close beside him, and he wanted to hear what they said, but he could not understand them. Then he realized they were speaking German, and felt a light-headed sort of joy at his own cleverness in discovering it. He looked up from the knees of the man who stood beside his cot, and found his face with a difficult, slow gaze. It was the doctor, and Bob's troubled eyes fell from his face, for it was stern and frowning. He met another glance, as a second man bent over him, and this face arrested his attention by its difference from the doctor's light hair and fair skin. The stranger had black smooth hair, dark, sparkling eyes, and an olive complexion. Bob could see his face plainly, for it was near him as the unknown bent over him from his short height. He wanted to ask, "Who are you?" but the effort seemed too great to make, and before he had summoned strength for it, the two had left his side and their boots were clumping off across the room.

Half an hour later, in the office of the Commandant, the secretary of the Spanish Embassy at Berlin urged his case strongly. He had an ally more powerful than his arguments in the fever itself, which was bringing a look of worn anxiety to the doctor's face. He had not time nor medicine enough for the few patients the camps now held, and the prospect of a wide-spread epidemic was horrible to his harassed and order-loving soul. The conference was a short one, but the Spanish Secretary went back to Berlin with a signed recommendation for Bob's removal in his pocket, and a strong confidence that success awaited his Ambassador, in his friendly prosecution of Mr. Leslie's demand.

Of all this neither Sergeant Cameron nor Bob knew anything, but on the same day Bob's faithful nurse had cause for more tempered rejoicing. One of the lulls in the fever, during which Captain Bertrand had been used to go about with languid footsteps, came to Bob's relief. To his bodily relief, for his mind felt almost as though he would rather have stayed in the delirium when he awoke again to the dingy darkness of his prison. But for the time he was much better, and the joy on Sergeant Cameron's face told plainly what his desperate anxiety had been. Bob's stammered thanks were quite inadequate, but without words a new bond of friendship had been forged between the two, which they knew could never break.

Bob ate a little bread, soaked in water, and wondered at the weakness that would hardly let him lift his hand to feed himself. "I'm pretty worthless, aren't I?" he asked, with a faint smile, then, with a sudden recollection of his ministrations to poor Bertrand he added, "I wonder what they've done to Bertrand! How I'd like to know."

"You haven't had any letters from home, Sergeant? Nothing for me?" was another repeated question. The sergeant's reluctant denial cast Bob's spirits down heavily, but in spite of all he convalesced—only, as both he and Sergeant Cameron knew, he would succumb again as Bertrand had done unless his youth and health could fight more strongly for him.

"Funny dreams I had," he said one day to Sergeant Cameron, as he sat over his meagre breakfast. "I used to think I was at home, then I'd be fighting again—I never got back to prison, there was some comfort in that. One time I thought I saw a man here with the doctor—a stranger with dark hair and eyes. He looked so different from these Germans—not like a Frenchman either. I wonder what I was dreaming of?"

"Have a little of the bread, sir," suggested Sergeant Cameron. He was rather non-committal that morning. A new British prisoner had just whispered to him of General Byng's forced retreat from a part of his hard-won gains, and the old soldier was torn with longing to get back on to the field. "I might have done more if I'd stayed with the Major on Governor's Island," he thought bitterly, then remembering Bob's need with a quick rush of generosity he took back his own words.

But Bob was more fortunate in his illness than he or Sergeant Cameron could guess. Before long it was made plain to them. A German officer visited Bob's room and told him with brief phrases in uncertain English of the negotiations for his exchange.

It was almost too much joy for one so weak and ill as Bob, and in the midst of his rejoicing his thoughts turned sadly to his faithful companion.

"Oh, Sergeant," he said the night the good news came, "I can't bear to have all the luck! It isn't fair."

"Never mind that, my lad," answered the brave old veteran, forgetting all titles of respect in the earnestness of the moment. "I'll do well enough here, but you'd not have stayed with me long. Thank God you can get out in time."

Ten days later, on a bright frosty morning, Mr. Leslie stood waiting at a little railway station on the Swiss frontier. He took little heed at first of the crowd around him, whose voices, high and low pitched, stern, anxious, hopeful or merry, as they spoke for busy government officials, Red Cross workers, or for the mothers, wives or children of returning prisoners, sounded in his ears. In a babel of French, German, Flemish and English they were giving voice to their impatient hopes and lingering fears, until Mr. Leslie's tumultuous thoughts seemed to become a part of theirs, and he turned to look at the picturesque waiting groups with an understanding sympathy in his kind eyes.

His face was rather weary, and his ready smile a little slower than when he had left America such a short while before. Even in peaceful Switzerland some of the great war's tragedy had been vividly unrolled before him. His search for Bob, through the Spanish Embassy at Berlin, had been a short one, for American prisoners were few and easily identified, but after that had come hopeless days of waiting in which he had looked failure in the face. The German government showed no inclination to set Bob free, and Mr. Leslie would have gone home unsuccessful if the prisoner he sought had not become a trial and menace to the prison camp that harbored him. Mr. Leslie blessed the fever as he waited for the train that was bringing Bob to the frontier. This realization of his highest hopes brought a warm flood of joy to his heart as he thought of the message that was even then winging its way across the sea.

Suddenly a little commotion rose among the crowd of people. They cried out and pointed around the bend of track, among the trees. At Mr. Leslie's side a little girl begged to be raised to her mother's shoulders, and the woman, as she lifted her, had tears streaming down her pale young face. The puff of smoke around the bend thickened, the engine whistled, and slowly the long train came into view. A wild cheer went up from men's and women's throats along the platform. Mr. Leslie swallowed hard and winked the mist from his eyes. His heart was beating faster than was comfortable as he went forward, as near as the watchful guards allowed, to meet the slowing train.

Inside, stretchers were made ready for those prisoners—and they were many—who could not walk from their places; others, who had lain on their stretchers on stationary racks along the car, were lifted out by willing and tender hands. But all who by any exertion of courage and strength could walk out unassisted made shift to do so, and with these Bob Gordon stood up wearily and tried his legs to make sure they would hold him.

"No, I'm all right—I don't need you, merci," he told a waiting attendant, not caring whether he spoke French or English. He was only afraid that his head would burst with the rush of joy that came at sight of that little station, with the far-off mountains behind it, that spot outside of Germany which told him he was free. He saw his feelings reflected in the worn faces about him—no pain had power to check it for that moment—and with a sudden return of some of his old agile strength, Bob walked from the car and stepped down upon the platform.

Mr. Leslie saw him before he reached the ground. Through the crowd of sad and joyful welcomers he made a swift way to his side. He had not seen the boy for a year or more—not since furlough—he told himself, desperately forcing back the shock of pity and distress that smote him at sight of that thin, white young face and slow-moving figure. Was this Bob, who had never been able to move quickly enough?

"The boy's had a fever, of course," Mr. Leslie muttered, though his heart refused to think it a quite satisfactory explanation.

But just then Bob saw and recognized him, and the old merry smile came swiftly to his lips. He raised his cap and waved it in a weak hurrah.

All Mr. Leslie's conflicting emotions vanished in the swift rush of one thought—whatever he had been through, Bob was free! "Hello! Hello!" he shouted, hardly knowing what he said.

"You, Cousin Henry! How on earth——" cried Bob, thrilling between astonishment and utter happiness as Mr. Leslie, carefully avoiding a wounded French soldier's toddling little son, reached past the guards to grasp Bob's outstretched hand.