“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.”

“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.