Dawn was hardly breaking on the morning of May 21st, when Lucy woke from the heavy sleep into which she had fallen early the night before. Nothing—not the crash of the bombardment nor the ceaseless anxiety of her own thoughts—could have kept her awake for long after her head touched the pillow the evening of Bob’s visit. Sleep had been stronger than all fears, though now she wondered that it had ever come, for the shock of the battle seemed louder and more terrible as it struck her protesting ears. Miss Pearse and her companion were already up, and Lucy hastily dressed herself, eager to learn what Major Greyson had decided about her departure. Last night the plan had still been unsettled, as it must be while trains and motor trucks had three times their normal work to do. It was a bitter disappointment to give up all hope of seeing her mother, though Major Greyson had told her that the renewed bombardment might last for days and that Mr. Leslie would have reached ChÂteau-Plessis before this, had any sort of undelayed travel been possible.

She was swayed by alternate hopes and fears as she brushed her hair in the half-darkness, and felt about on the little table for her comb and ribbons. It was so desperately hard to think at all with that unearthly noise dazing her brain, but in spite of her tormenting uncertainty she clung steadfastly to one consoling thought. She had helped to bring her father out of danger. Her journey had not been in vain, however hopeless her longing to do more than stand weakly by watching the struggle in which Bob and the rest fought so gallantly. She knew she could help—even here on the battle-front. Last year it seemed impossible that she could do anything toward winning Bob’s freedom, and yet did she not have a hand in sending Mr. Leslie on that long, hard journey? Lucy had not much conceit in her nature, but she did have a good deal of her brother’s confident energy, and, her courage once firmly grasped, she could persevere in a cause on which her heart was set, like a true soldier’s daughter.

“I’m ready, Miss Pearse,” she called presently, waking from her serious thoughts as the nurse came to her door.

They went in silence down the stairs into the street, for this morning Miss Pearse did not try any of her usual kind and encouraging means of bolstering up Lucy’s cheerfulness. She was strangely silent and preoccupied. In the street a hurrying throng of soldiers, women and children were passing by, dim shadows in the first light of the dawn. Lucy wondered at their numbers as she made her way among them, her eyes turning with a fearful fascination toward the east, where the light of bursting shells outshone the pale streaks of day. The hospital was the scene of a great though orderly confusion. Almost a hundred wounded men had been brought in during the night, and every spare foot of space had been used to lay down a mattress or to unfold a narrow army cot. Doctors, orderlies and nurses were moving in every direction about the crowded halls, and Lucy stole away with painfully beating heart, and found refuge in her father’s little room.

A nurse was sitting there, with her arms upon the window-sill, staring out into the shadowy street. She turned pale cheeks and troubled eyes toward Lucy, and her faint smile had nothing cheerful in it as she rose and offered her a chair by her father’s side. Lucy felt a pang of fear at sight of that tired face. The nurse looked as though she had kept an anxious watch, and Lucy turned searching eyes upon her father, fearing a change for the worse.

“He’s doing well,” the nurse said in her ear, guessing her thoughts, and she accompanied the words with a little encouraging nod, though the color did not come back to her pale cheeks, nor the apprehension leave her eyes.

Lucy sat down at her father’s side, wondering greatly, and the nurse went out. Colonel Gordon was just beginning to wake, but for a few moments more he lingered in a doze. At last he opened his eyes and looked at Lucy with a slow understanding smile of recognition.

“You, little daughter?” he asked, reaching out a hand. “What time is it, anyway? It’s not light yet. What are you doing here?” Then as the full force of the guns smote upon his ears and brain he started up on his pillows, saying with quick earnestness, “You’re going to-day, eh—Lucy? They’ve arranged it? Greyson promised me. Henry’s not back?”

“I don’t know yet,” Lucy answered, bending over him to be heard. “I haven’t seen Major Greyson, he’s so busy, but I think he’s going to send me off some time to-day.” Just then it was real happiness to hear her father’s voice so full of energy and purpose—so nearly like his old confident self. She smiled and forgot her worries for a moment. In all Colonel Gordon’s eager interest of the evening before at the news of Bob’s visit he had seemed tired and restless, but this morning even Lucy’s unskilled eyes could see a real improvement. She began to tell him about Bob once more.

“If you could only have watched him yesterday morning in the air, Father! You’ve seen him fly though, of course. They were so wonderful, he and Captain Jourdin, keeping after those big German planes until they drove them home. He looks well, I think.” She checked herself and added truthfully, “But he’s thinner than he was.” She did not tell her father of the anxiety Bob had undergone in his behalf. She wanted to describe his surprise at their meeting, but the effort needed to talk was terrific. It was like speaking in a never-ending peal of thunder.

Soon Colonel Gordon’s nurse came back and told Lucy that breakfast was ready. It was daylight now in the wards, where the workers still passed from one patient to the next, along the rows of cots and mattresses. Lucy glanced down the long room with a little shuddering tremor of pity and horror, not daring to look too closely at those silent bandaged figures. But in the depths of her heart the longing still persisted, first roused months ago at that little nursing class on Governor’s Island, to do something to help from the stores of her own health and energy.

She went on into the nurses’ rest and dining-room and, finding no one yet at the table, stood by one of the quaint, narrow windows, from which the glass had been shattered long ago, looking out across the garden into the street. The crowd of people had grown dense in the last hour. Now it was entirely made up of townspeople; women, old men and children, who seemed to-day to have forgotten their orderly routine and to be hurrying blindly through the streets with baskets on their arms and bundles on their shoulders. The children clung to their mothers’ skirts with looks of fear and bewilderment. In the few minutes that Lucy stood there not a person passed by going toward the eastern side of ChÂteau-Plessis. They were fleeing from the battle-front toward the other end of the town, where already the transport lines were overloaded until not a horse or mule was to be had for miles around. As she watched a deadly fear crept over Lucy’s heart. She tried to stifle it, but could not. Her eyes did not deceive her, and had not Miss Pearse’s face two hours ago first stirred her to uneasiness? She went to the door of the room, wondering why the nurses did not come, and caught sight of Major Greyson and another medical officer talking earnestly together. They were forced to speak so loud that the words came plainly to her ears, as uncertainly she started forward.

“It’s impossible, Major!” exclaimed the younger man. “She can’t go now. She’s better off here than lost in that raging torrent of humanity behind the town. We may be——”

A shell that seemed to burst over the hospital itself drowned his last words, and Lucy could not hear Major Greyson’s reply as the two moved off together. Her heart had begun to pound with terror, and she longed desperately to follow Major Greyson and find out the worst. But the wards were a place of battle now, where the workers strained every nerve to do what their small number could for the growing hundreds of wounded men. She could not enter it yet, and hastily deciding to go back to her father, who was often alone in these crowded hours, she dropped down on a chair for a moment until she could calm her frightened breathing. She buried her face in her hands, and while she sat there, running steps came up behind her and Miss Pearse fell on her knees beside the chair and caught hold of Lucy’s hands. The young nurse’s cheeks were deadly pale, but her brave, honest blue eyes met Lucy’s frankly. She took the terrified girl by the shoulders and spoke close to her ear.

“They said for me to tell you, but you’ll need all your courage, so don’t you let it go. Oh, Lucy, Lucy! The French and Americans are far outnumbered! They are retreating on both sides of us, and ChÂteau-Plessis will soon be inside the German lines.” In spite of all her self-control her voice trembled and broke, and for a second she hid her face on Lucy’s shoulder, while the two clung together.

Too dazed to realize at that moment the extent of the catastrophe, Lucy tried to put her whirling thoughts together and make this awful thing seem real. “The Germans will take ChÂteau-Plessis,” she told herself, and still the words had little meaning for her. She felt that somewhere she had stopped living and begun to dream, but just where was the question. Only Miss Pearse’s face recalled her a little—that brave, young face with lips tight closed to hide their trembling and undaunted purpose in her clear eyes.

“It began with a new push against our lines at Argenton,” Lucy heard her saying. “They’ve given countless lives to take it, but now they are there we have to fall back to straighten out our line. It was all in an hour of the early morning,—the turning-point of the battle. Our reserves were held up somewhere, and the Germans brought two divisions for every one of ours into the fight.” She stopped, breathless, and Lucy, beginning to understand, asked suddenly:

“All those people running by; can they get away?”

“Not unless they walk for miles—there is no other chance. Major Greyson is nearly wild because you have not gone. Of course there was no question of evacuating the hospital—we have to stay.”

“And I have to stay,” said Lucy slowly, but Miss Pearse did not hear the words.

“Your father does not know,” she continued. “They have given him something to make him sleep, and he is comfortable.” A sob rose unchecked in Lucy’s throat, but in a moment Miss Pearse had drawn her to her feet, saying earnestly, “Whatever happens, we must look ahead and hope, or we shall have no courage left. They will leave us in the hospital, you know. We shall be safe enough here.”

Safe sounded a strange word to use, Lucy thought, as she walked dully toward the table.

She tried her best, in spite of that numbing paralysis of fear, to capture something of Miss Pearse’s calm and steadfast bravery, but that hurried breakfast and the whole morning after it seemed no more than a great waking nightmare. The other nurses had joined them for a few hasty mouthfuls, every one with that desperate struggle between fear and courage written upon her tired face. For it is harder to be brave when one is spent with weariness, and none of the nurses had slept more than three or four hours out of the twenty-four since the opening of the second attack.

When Lucy was left alone again she sat on the window-ledge, staring at the ever-changing scene outside. Big motor-lorries, loaded with stores and equipment, were making their difficult way through the streets now. Perched on top of the loads were men hanging on somehow, for the convalescent patients who were at all able to stand a journey had begged or stolen transportation for a few miles toward the rear, whence they could strike another blow instead of falling into the enemy’s hands. Along with these came the crowd of civilian refugees, weighed down with the shabby household furnishings that meant too much to them to leave behind, just as their homes had meant so much that they had clung there in desperate hope until escape became all but impossible. The straggling lines looked sadly unable to cover the long, hard miles that lay between them and any refuge. Lucy’s eyes grew blurred with tears of pity as, forgetting her own overpowering fear and dread, she watched a heavily-burdened woman shuffle past, carrying her baby as well as bulky bundles of clothes and bedding. After her toddled two other children, one of them no more than able to walk, stumbling helplessly among the heaps of stone.

“Oh, how dreadful—how terrible!” cried Lucy, burying her face in her trembling hands with a quick sob. Then she thought, “This is war. I never knew what it was until now.”

In another hour fragments of the retreating French and American regiments passed through the town. Field artillery, too, whose wheels and galloping horses were almost unheard in the fire of the German guns. But the greater part of the troops which had so stubbornly held the trenches in front of the wood retreated around the edge of the town to their prepared defenses in the rear, preferring to abandon ChÂteau-Plessis at once than to submit the two hospitals to a prolonged bombardment.

Toward noon the noise of the guns seemed to Lucy’s aching ears to have grown intolerable. Too restless to sit still, she visited her father’s room and found him peacefully asleep. She was glad of it, and yet she longed so desperately for the comfort of his companionship. Where were her mother and Cousin Henry? As for Bob, she dared not think of him. She went toward the door leading out into the little garden. The street was filled with dust, but the lines of fleeing people had passed on out of sight. She stepped onto the threshold and as she did so an orderly, opening a box of Red Cross dressings close by, let fall his tools and caught her arm in an iron grip.

“No, Miss! Not another step!” he shouted.

Lucy stared at the American’s hot, tired face, as he bent toward her to be heard in the uproar. He was a Hospital Corps man whom she had spoken with often in the past few days. Now, in excuse for his rough handling, he beckoned her to look quickly through the doorway. As she did so the explosion of a German shell threw up a great heap of stones and earth not two hundred feet away, across the square.

“They’ve got our range,” he said, close to her ear. “But this old building’s pretty solid. It will stand some hammering.” His voice was steady as ever and Lucy looked at him with respect and admiration in her frightened eyes, longing for his courage. But he had faced the enemy before. He had told her of service on Filipino and Mexican battle-fields.

Would there be fighting in the streets, in which the Germans would be victorious? Lucy had seen fighting once in the streets of a village in the island of Jolo. But then the enemy had been Filipino savages, quickly overpowered by the soldiers, and she had been too little to do more than cling to her mother’s skirts in wonder. As she turned back toward the street another shell struck a house close to the hospital, leaving a huge, gaping hole in the brick wall when the smoke and dust cleared away. Still she stood frozen to the spot, her heart beating in great throbs, helplessly waiting for she knew not what. Presently Major Greyson’s hand was laid on her trembling arm and he was saying:

“Come away from here, Lucy. Come into your father’s room.”

It was the only spot free from hurrying workers making their difficult way among beds too close together. Even here cots had been brought in and made ready for two more wounded officers. Colonel Gordon still slept on, unconscious of the day’s calamity, and Lucy breathed a quivering sigh of misery as her eyes rested on his peaceful face. Major Greyson led her to the window and pointed toward the sky above the square. “It’s almost over,” he said. “These last shots are only for bravado. Don’t you notice the slackening of the fire?”

In the sky the clouds of dust and smoke were clearing, and Lucy did distinguish a lessening in the terrific wave of sound. Its quality had changed, too. As the German infantry engaged the retreating troops, rifle and machine-gun fire was mingled with the bursting shells. In another few minutes the bombardment had sunk to single explosions at irregular intervals. Even at that awful moment the relief to her ears seemed almost like peace.

“Our batteries in the wood have been withdrawn to the new line, or silenced,” Major Greyson went on. “The Germans will stop firing until their airmen get the range again.” He took Lucy’s hand in his and held it in a strong clasp. “We’ll just have to bear up, Lucy, shan’t we? I have no fear for your courage. You’ve got the good American stuff in you—the sort that never fails. We’ll show them their new enemy is worthy of their steel.” His eyes flashed in his haggard and anxious face as he searched the street with watchful gaze. “We’ll do well enough here, you know. They’ll want us to look after their own wounded. With any luck in the counter-attack our troops will recover the town.”

At these words a great flood of hope swept back to Lucy’s heart The Germans could not hold ChÂteau-Plessis! Then she would be brave. For only a few days she could face it as Bob would do.

Suddenly she felt Major Greyson’s hand leave hers to steal about her shoulders, as though warning her to summon all her strength of will. She looked through the broken window and that arm about her shoulder tightened. Up the street were advancing a squad of mounted officers, gray-clad figures with helmets like no others in the world. Behind them came a company of infantry. The noise of the guns had died down almost to silence. Lucy’s throat began to choke her until she pressed one cold hand against it, struggling for breath. Her eyes could not bear to look upon that hateful sight, and still she could not force herself to turn away. On they came, another company behind the first and still another. She was looking at the Kaiser’s soldiers, servants of the man who was the author of all this horror—who had made the world into a battle-field. These were a part of Germany’s army, of the greedy power which had roused even peaceful America at last in furious self-defense. It had torn apart the Gordons’ happy home, sent Bob to prison and to hourly peril, and brought her father close to death.

Lucy did not put these flying thoughts in words. They passed through her mind in half-formed images of trembling dread and bitter indignation. From the hopeless conflict of her brain a despairing sigh escaped her lips, and Major Greyson’s eyes left the advancing troops to look at her.

“Come, Lucy, be a soldier,” he begged, pity shining in his eyes at sight of her white face, struggling for composure, beneath the childish mop of fair hair. Then as she turned her wide hazel eyes, filled with a desperate resolution, upon him, he said with stubborn confidence, “This isn’t the end of things, you know, Lucy. This is only the dark hour before the dawn.”