Belinda of the Red Cross
Date: 2024-10-12T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918 -- Fiction; War stories; Love stories; Nurses -- Fiction; Air pilots; Military -- Fiction

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Title: Belinda of the Red Cross

Author: Robert W. Hamilton

Illustrator: A. O. Scott

Release date: October 12, 2024 [eBook #74567]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Sully and Kleinteich

Credits: Jamie Brydone-Jack, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS ***

BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

BY ROBERT W. HAMILTON

FRONTISPIECE BY
A. O. SCOTT

NEW YORK
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1917, by
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BELINDA

CONTENTS

I. | A Young Man Out of the Air
II. | The Wreck of His House of Cards
III. | Crossed Wires
IV. | A Decision
V. | The Runaway Shipmaster
VI. | Fellow Voyagers
VII. | The Monster
VIII. | "Pour la Patrie"
IX. | First Experiences
X. | Belinda at Work
XI. | An Unexpected Meeting
XII. | The Other Side of the Shield
XIII. | The Preparation
XIV. | Amid War's Alarms
XV. | At the Mercy of the Enemy
XVI. | A Threatening Situation
XVII. | Excitement Enough
XVIII. | Perils Increase
XIX. | Over the Enemy's Lines at Night
XX. | The Duel
XXI. | Across Burning Sands
XXII. | Love at War
XXIII. | Beclouded
XXIV. | Her Fears are Sharpened
XXV. | Paul in a Whirlpool of Doubt
XXVI. | Touch and Go
XXVII. | Renaud
XXVIII. | The Hero
XXIX. | At Last
XXX. | "Those Eyes—That Hand!"
XXXI. | The Escape
XXXII. | From War to Peace

BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

CHAPTER I

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE AIR

Two white-uniformed orderlies guided the stretcher on its rubber-tired wheels into the corridor—the corridor which was all white tile, marble, enameled steel and glass.

The military-looking surgeon stalking ahead had not adjusted his mask; the jetty, cropped beard he wore on his full chin gave his countenance an especially sinister expression. His black eyes—their glance of a peculiarly penetrating quality—embraced the two immaculately dressed nurses on the settee beside the door of the operating room. Sue Blaine and Belinda Melnotte had just been speaking of the Herr Doktor; perhaps they looked conscious under his swift, keen scrutiny.

Sue Blaine had begun tragically: "Belinda, I hear the elevator creaking again. It's either you or me to assist the Herr Doktor. And I'm so tired of it all!"

"Yet you took upon yourself the novitiate of a trained nurse for two years." Belinda Melnotte's laugh was low, full, delicious. It was no saccharine giggle, but came from a splendid chest in a robust body with a bell-like tone to it that delighted the ear. "Two whole years, Sue! Still, I wish I were just entering, after all."

"What?" gasped the other. "Why! when I am through here I shall incinerate my apron, cap and first-aid kit with appropriate ceremonies in our back-yard. I'll refuse even to do up my little brother's finger if he cuts it. No, I am through—through!"

"Hush! The Herr Doktor!" Belinda Melnotte breathed.

The black-browed surgeon arrived.

"You will please to act with me, Miss Belinda. It is perhaps an important case."

Belinda Melnotte's cheeks burned warmly. It secretly angered her that she should blush when Doctor Herschall looked at her or spoke to her. But she almost always betrayed that mark of confusion. He was the only member of the great hospital's medical staff who called her by her given name.

He was quite a wonderful man, she knew, this tall and broad-shouldered surgeon. Many of the nurses admired him immensely, for he was not unsocial in spite of his stern and aggressive appearance.

He was a keen and analytical surgeon, with ten years of practice in the city to add to his first fame gained in his own country. He was but thirty-five. Others of the medical staff of the hospital, ten years his senior, were of sprightlier manner than Doctor Herschall and seemed to Belinda far younger. Then there were his personal peculiarities—the boring glance of his black eyes, the almost feline touch of his hand—which were obnoxious to the nurse.

Having been called into consultation as a specialist in her father's case, Doctor Herschall had met Belinda in her own home. Therefore he assumed a familiar manner toward her from the very beginning of her hospital training that incensed her, yet it was too indefinite for her to show open resentment.

Had she wished to do so, this was not a time to display her private distaste for the Herr Doktor, as he was called throughout the hospital. The rolling stretcher was at hand. Under the canvas sheet was a still form; but a high, querulous voice—the unmistakable tones of delirium—babbled like a running brook:

"What d'you think of her, Doc? And after all I'd done for the old girl! Talk about ingratitude! Nursing her along all this way—clear from the Hempstead grounds; and then, when I had to land her, doing it as though I were putting her to sleep in a feather-bed—cranky old thing! I hopped out to see what was wrong with the propeller, and what does she do to me? Slapped me! That's what she did. Slapped me—and I never did a thing to her——"

His shaking, querulous voice trailed off into indistinct mutterings. The two nurses looked curiously at the face of the man on the stretcher while the surgeon was opening the door and the wheeled conveyance was rolled into the spotless operating room.

The nurses were not usually curious regarding the cases brought in by the ambulances. There were so many each day that Belinda Melnotte, with all her interest in the work, thought of them only in numbers. There is little variety in city accident cases.

But the babbling of this young man, whose strained, flushed face appeared at one end of the ambulance sheet, caught her attention. It suggested something out of the ordinary; the victim might be an extraordinary person.

"Oh, Belinda!" whispered Sue Blaine, suddenly seizing Belinda's arm. "I know who he is. Sandy Sanderson!"

Belinda repeated the name questioningly. "You know him?" she asked.

"From his pictures in the papers. Don't you remember? The flying man—Sandy Sanderson they call him. He won one of the flying events at the Sheepshead Bay maneuvers only last month. Surely you remember?"

Belinda shook her head negatively; but her eyes remained fixed upon the face of the victim of the accident. "He is feverish," she murmured, following the stretcher into the operating room. This was indeed no ordinary case. She half understood already the meaning of the young man's muttered phrases. He might be seriously injured. An aviator!

"This way," said the surgeon gutturally, speaking to the men who lifted the patient. The latter screamed weakly as he was moved; then he fell silent and into a syncope.

"Much fever here. Hum!" muttered Doctor Herschall, straightening the limbs of the young man on the high table. The attendants departed. The nurse had been arranging the stand of instruments, and now wheeled it to the doctor's hand. The cone, sponge, and can of ether were ready. The surgeon continued to examine deftly the body before him.

"The left shoulder blade. Hum! Much laceration—scraped to the bone. Hum! Fine physique. An athlete, this fellow, though he won't weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. Hum! We must save this torn cuticle if we can. If we must graft—hum!—well, we must."

He had removed the ambulance surgeon's bandages. Those over the left shoulder and the bandage about the victim's head seemed to indicate all the injuries the young man had suffered. Yet Doctor Herschall was thorough in his examination. His attention to detail in even the least important case was characteristic of the man. He possessed the exact German mind, as well as the Prussian bearing and look.

"Fever—fever," he repeated. "Much fever. And not entirely induced by these wounds. He has only just now been brought in from Van Cortlandt Park and, the interne tells me, could not have been long injured when he was found beside his fallen machine."

Doctor Herschall had this habit of talking while at work—even after adjusting his mask. At first, when Belinda chanced to assist him, he had addressed his remarks directly to her. She never replied if she could help it; therefore of late he merely carried on a monologue of comment as though he were addressing a class in the operating auditorium. His final words on this occasion startled the nurse into speaking.

"A flying machine, Doctor? Did he fall?"

"He came down, at least," growled Doctor Herschall. "Ach, these American airmen are mere amateurs! No training. Everything is haphazard in this country. Anybody reckless and bold enough is allowed to ascend in an aeroplane. Not like European methods—especially our own army methods. In Germany a man must be trained for his work ere he is allowed to pilot even a taube."

The deft-handed nurse made no further comment, feeling that she had already been unwise in opening the way for his direct address. Doctor Herschall went skilfully about his work; nor did the nurse fail in the least of her duties. A murmured word—even a gesture—brought the required instrument, or whatever was needed. She watched the doctor closely, rather than looked at the raw wound he was at work upon. She had never got over that first feeling of creeping horror that clutched her when she beheld a gory wound. Yet she possessed such splendid control that few suspected Belinda Melnotte even owned nerves. She approached almost every operation with reluctance and aversion. Abundant physical health and perfect mental poise enabled her to hide her real feelings.

The shoulder was dressed. The cut upon the head just at the roots of the hair, where the scar might easily be hidden, was superficial. The head bandage being removed, the nurse gained a better view of the airman's countenance.

There was a roach of reddish, sandy hair over the broad brow; but the eyebrows and lashes were dark enough to lend to his features a certain dignity. These features were sharp rather than noble of outline; yet he possessed a good mouth and a firm chin. The twenty-four hours' growth of beard gave unmistakable reason for his being dubbed "Sandy" by his friends and admirers.

Belinda thought him a particularly interesting-looking young man. It was seldom that she so quickly felt concern in the personality of a patient.

"This fever, superinduced by the wounds, has a deeper foundation, however," muttered Doctor Herschall. "Watch his temperature, Miss Belinda. Speak to Doctor Potter—although I shall make a note of the case myself."

The attendants were summoned and the Herr Doktor went away to wash his hands and remove the spotted rubber apron. The superintendent of nurses—by courtesy "matron"—bustled in as the still unconscious patient was lifted to the stretcher.

"Let Miss Blaine clean up here and boil the instruments," said the brisk little woman. "I want you to take this patient, Miss Melnotte. Room A-a. He's just been telephoned in about. Why, he's quite a public character!"

"I understand," Belinda said, "that he is a flying-man."

"Yes. Mr. Frank Sanderson. Quite famous, in a way. He fell with his plane over Van Cortlandt Park in the night. There must be something behind it—more than a mere practice flight, it would seem to me. They do not usually go up at night, do they?"

"I really do not know, Mrs. Blythe."

"Well, he is to have the best of everything. And so young a man!" sighed the matron, gazing down upon the face of the aviator. "Give him your best attention, Miss Melnotte. I really feel safe when I put a patient in your care. I wish you were not going to leave us so soon."

"I wish, too, that there might be an opening here," the girl said wistfully.

"Do you, really? It is always the way," sighed the matron. "We graduate so many more nurses than we can possibly use. But you will have small trouble in getting placed, my dear. So many are going into Red Cross work just now."

"I had thought of that," murmured Belinda dreamily.

"Not you!" the matron cried. "You have too much sense, I hope, my dear. Those who go to France for service on the battlefields take their lives in their hands."

"But so we do if we go into some of those East Side tenements to nurse contagious cases," the girl said quietly. "And the Red Cross nurses do such a noble work—don't you think so?"

"Sentimentalism!" snapped Mrs. Blythe. "I hope all my girls have too much sense."

Belinda shook her head, but made no rejoinder, although she could not subscribe to the matron's tenets.

At the moment, too, her mind was given to thoughts of the young man out of the air. She followed to the private room engaged for his comfort, and helped the attendant put him to bed.

CHAPTER II

THE WRECK OF HIS HOUSE OF CARDS

Sanderson awoke with the sun streaming in through the high window and lying like a golden mantle flung across the floor and bed. Otherwise everything in the room seemed glaringly white. It was mid-afternoon, and the westering orb had full command of this side of the hospital wing.

He knew at once where he was. There was no wild start and "Where am I?" cry. He merely looked up at the rather sturdy figure in voluminous apron and cap standing within the range of his vision, and grinned.

"I say," he croaked, "that must have been some bump. How hot I am! Can I have a drink, Nurse?"

She seemed to have foreseen this first request. In a moment the glass and tube were at his lips. She would not allow him to raise his head from the pillow. As he drank slowly the refreshing contents of the glass he examined her face with deeper appreciation than Belinda Melnotte imagined.

"I say," he sighed finally, "that was great! When did they bring me in?"

"This morning."

"I—I can't remember it," he murmured. "But I must have come down before daylight."

"You were brought downtown at nine o'clock," she told him cheerfully. "They found you and your machine in Van Cortlandt Park."

"Is that as far as I got?"

"And quite far enough, I should say," she quickly commented, and with disapproval. "Flying at night! What reckless creatures you airmen are!"

His face was suddenly twisted into a grimace of pain, but he managed to chuckle.

"Oh, some of us expect soon to be regular 'fly-by-nights.'" Then, quickly: "Ah, I remember. By jove, she slapped me!"

The nurse recalled his babblings when he was brought in, and laughed her low, delicious laugh.

"I suppose it was only a lover's quarrel," she suggested.

His eyes twinkled, too. "She's a cranky old thing. I ought to jilt her. And after this—well, she slapped me with that propeller good and plenty. How much will it set me back, Nurse? How long must I lie here? Is that shoulder seriously hurt?"

"Nothing is broken," she assured him cheerfully.

"Except my head," and he felt the bandage tenderly.

"Oh, that's nothing."

"Ow! I bet that hurt me," he grinned. "So complimentary——"

"Now I must take your temperature. You may talk no longer," she said severely.

He watched her with a rather quizzical gaze as she moved about the room while he "smoked the glass pipe." If she apprehended his scrutiny she was so careless of it—or so well balanced of mind—that she displayed not the slightest self-consciousness.

He found himself cataloging in his rather hazy thoughts the several attributes of person and manner that made Belinda Melnotte an attractive and most refreshing personality to him. Her calm was matronly; but her exquisite complexion, her ripe lips, the tendrils of hair that clustered about the edge of her cap, her full and brilliant eyes, were all virginal.

She moved with an air of perfect self-confidence. Her hand was not small, but was very soft, very beautifully formed, and had the firm clasp of a man's. Her bared forearm and wrist, tapering from the elbow, was worthy of being modeled. The shadows that lay in the curves of her neck lent the appearance of ivory to the flesh.

Sanderson was distinctly not given to worship of the feminine; but this very capable-looking and particularly beautiful nurse held his interest from his first conscious moment. It was not mere prettiness or sex-charm; she was, in truth, downright beautiful.

"Magnificent!" the patient told himself, and then wandered off into a feverish state of half-slumber in which the nurse was only one of many characters that flitted across the screen of his imagination.

He was conscious at one time of a grave-looking man standing at the foot of the bed and pulling his Vandyke beard while he talked in jerky sentences to the calm-faced nurse.

"Yes, it is malarial without doubt. I know what those aviation grounds are like. A swamp on one side—all undrained land thereabout. Full of malaria. He likely had a high temperature when he went up in his machine."

Sanderson thought he burst out laughing. He tried to tell the doctor that going up in a cranky aeroplane would give anybody a high temperature.

"With the complication of his wounds he is likely to have a siege of it," the physician said to the nurse. "Are you in charge?"

"Day duty for the present, Doctor Potter."

"Ah—yes. When you are relieved, impress upon the night nurse that she is to call the doctor on duty if there is the least change. I fancy he is quite out of his head."

He was out of his head. He next awoke in the night and a plain-featured nurse endeavored to give him his medicine.

"Say," he demanded, "where's the peach?"

"Still hanging on the tree, boy, as far as you are concerned, I fancy," she replied, and tried again to give him his medicine. He knocked the spoon and glass to the far side of Room A-a.

But Miss Trivett was a very capable nurse, if lacking in personal pulchritude. She patiently prepared the draught again and, seizing his nose suddenly between thumb and finger, forced the dose down his throat.

"What do you know about that?" sputtered Sanderson. "You—you are own sister to that cranky old machine of mine! She slapped me——" and he rambled off into a repetition of the story of his accident.

His temperature was high, and Miss Trivett reported this to the doctor. It was a fight then for the aviator's life; but he did not realize how ill he was until, after a week or more, he came out of the Vale of Delirium in which he had wandered and beheld Belinda Melnotte clearly again.

"Say!"

The weakness of his voice so startled him that he almost lost consciousness before he could express his desire. The nurse was quickly at his side and, stooping, placed a firm hand upon his breast. Later he realized that the gesture betrayed the fact that the strong, beautiful hand had often held him down on his pillow while he was delirious.

"Say! I—I——When do I eat, Nurse?"

She smiled upon him, and Sanderson thought her face fairly glorified thereby.

"You may eat now if you feel like it."

"Bully!" he whispered. "Porterhouse steak and a mug of musty——"

"In liquid and concentrated form," she interposed, and soon the glass of milk and Vichy water was at his lips.

It wearied him even to swallow that. He lay and watched her moving quietly about. When she laid a cool palm upon his brow to mark if the fever had subsided, he could have asked her to keep it there.

He had never experienced such a sense of weakness before—at least, within his adult remembrance. It was a curious thing—this sense of dependence upon a woman. And a woman so much stronger physically than himself.

Previous to this time many girls had seemed to Frank Sanderson soft little things—rather useless "play-toys"—were the truth to be told. He could not remember his mother. He was the youngest of a family of boys brought up in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a father who had loved their mother too well to bring another woman into his life.

The young man's social instincts were not well developed. He had been sent to a boys' school, and then to college. The athletic field had claimed his interest rather than fraternity life and social entertainments. And he had always looked with scorn upon those of his mates who allowed themselves to be lionized by silly women.

For two years now he had been devoted to aviation. With a moderate income at his disposal, and no expensive tastes to gratify, he was able to follow this bent. The elder Sanderson was dead. Frank's brothers were scattered—all in business in various cities. Aside from his fellow aviators, the members of the two or three clubs he belonged to, and a few boyhood friends, he was a man alone.

Now began for him a series of incidents that were both strange and delightful. He had never been so near, or so familiar with, such a girl as this before.

"So different from Stella!" he murmured to himself. "Vastly different from Stella!"

The wound in his shoulder was healing nicely; but as an aid to this improvement he had to be moved with extreme care. Belinda Melnotte's strength, as well as her unstinted attention, was of great assistance—greater than the mere medical skill expended upon the case.

The black-bearded, black-eyed surgeon came occasionally and examined the wound; but it was the nurse who always dressed it. The cut upon Sanderson's forehead was of course soon healed.

"We might graft a bit on this shoulder," the surgeon suggested, "and so leave a less puckered scar. But the wound heals nicely. Hum!"

"'Hum!' it is, Doc," quoted Sanderson with a grin. "That would keep me here longer, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"And I've been here too long already. It is now a month. The other boys must have sailed. I guess we'll let it go as it lies, Doc. I shall not dress décolleté, so the scar won't show," and he grinned again.

He noted how this stern and rather sour-visaged surgeon treated the nurse. It was with a measure of familiarity that seemed to betray an association beyond daily intercourse in the wards of the hospital. The nurse seldom spoke to the Herr Doktor; but the latter watched her continually, and Sanderson was troubled in his mind.

Belinda Melnotte was the most companionable of nurses—bright, joyous, kind. When she was alone with him, or if the matron or other nurses or members of the medical staff were in the room, she was the life of the company. But upon the entrance of Doctor Herschall she changed. She seemed to droop, or close within herself. She listened to the Herr Doktor respectfully, and had nothing to say to the patient. The latter grew more and more puzzled.

"How came you to take up nursing, Miss Melnotte?" he asked her one day.

"Because I had nursed my father so long that, when he died, I was lonely with nothing in particular to do. Besides, one must have some occupation. Why did you take up aviation, Mr. Sanderson?"

"For somewhat the same reason," he said, smiling. "One must have some occupation, as you say. But going up in the air—and falling down again—seems to me a more exciting way of passing the time than this," and his gesture included the almost bare and rather cheerless room.

"Ah, but we nurses live the other side of it," and she laughed. "We do not suffer the pain, or live altogether within these sanitary and immaculate walls."

"You serve long enough hours, I fancy," Sanderson said, with appreciation. "And the draft upon your sympathies! Or am I exceptionally favored, Miss Melnotte? Do you treat all your patients so sweetly and generously as you do me?"

A warmer color flooded into her cheeks; but she still smiled.

"That is a part of our trade, Mr. Sanderson. Cheerfulness is more potent than drugs."

"Does Doctor Herschall say that?"

She had turned away so that he could not see her countenance. But he knew she resented the remark, for she changed the topic of conversation instantly.

"Tell me what it feels like to be up in the air, Mr. Sanderson."

"Just like that," he chuckled. "You know you're up in the air, and if you think of how far below the earth is, you won't think of much else, I assure you."

"Oh, it seems very dangerous."

"Not in every way. The driver of a racing auto is in much greater danger. Little chance of collision up yonder, unless two pilots allow their planes to draw so near to each other that the suction of the propellers causes a catastrophe."

"Just as the suction of a passing train may draw one under the wheels?"

"Exactly. But I feared all manner of things when I first went up as a passenger," he pursued. "The pilot was so matter-of-fact that I thought him reckless. I was scarcely seated and my belt hooked when we were off. I heard the wheels bounding along the ground. Then the noise stopped—we were in the air."

"Oh!"

"Yes. I thought I should feel vertigo, as I often did when at an altitude. I dared not look out of the machine until we were perhaps five hundred feet up. Then, to my surprise, I felt not the least sensation of height. The ground seemed merely moving slowly under and away from me. We kept climbing. I could see the country for miles and miles."

"How wonderful!"

As the days passed and Sanderson grew stronger, there was less danger of his exhausting himself by talking. Nurse Melnotte was really having an easy time.

"A soft snap," little Sue Blaine declared enviously. "And such an interesting patient, too! You always do have all the luck, Belinda."

"Do you think so?" came, with her quiet smile.

"He's an awfully nice fellow. Believe me—I'd set my cap for him if I'd had the luck to be detailed on the case. Think! An aviator!"

"It's a very pretty cap—and on a very pretty head, dear," laughed Belinda.

If she felt any interest in Sanderson other than interest in the young man out of the air as a patient, she did not betray it to either her fellow nurses or to the patient himself. But if she was out of the young man's sight in the daytime, he missed her. Nor did he succeed in hiding his admiration from other eyes. One evening when she left him in Miss Trivett's care, the night nurse remarked his gaze fixed upon Belinda as she departed.

Miss Trivett was a good nurse, but she was brusque. The patients never made love to her.

"I often wonder," she scoffed on this occasion, "if all the soft-headed men are brought to this hospital. Or does bringing them here make them soft-headed?"

"Why for the slam?" Sanderson asked chuckling. The night nurse and her caustic speeches amused him.

"Oh, I see you making sheep's-eyes," she declared. "You fall for a pretty face like the rest of them."

"Oh! Miss Melnotte? But she possesses more attractions than a pretty face," corrected the young man coolly.

"True. And do you suppose you are the first man to find it out?"

The thought had not before impressed him.

"I suppose if she is attractive in my sight, she must be in the sight of others," he said slowly.

"I should say! She's probably made desperate love to by an average of a patient a week. That's the meaning of my 'slam,' as you call it. It's just a bit of a warning, my boy," went on Miss Trivett cheerfully. "Beauty is more of a liability than an asset to a nurse—a nurse who is really in earnest, I mean. And Miss Melnotte does not scamp her work. Why, she is the most popular of us all with the surgical staff!"

Sanderson was quick to seize the opportunity to ask a question that had long been trembling on his lips. Yet he put it carelessly.

"That black-browed German seems to be mighty fond of her."

"The Herr Doktor? Now you've said something, boy. Anybody can see that."

"Are they engaged—or anything?"

"Shouldn't wonder," Miss Trivett said briskly. "She's almost through here at the hospital, you know. The Powers That Be frown upon anything sentimental between the doctors and members of the nursing force. So they're very whist about it. She's likely to remove her cap and apron for good in a few days—and become, perhaps, Frau Doktor."

Sanderson fell silent, and Miss Trivett shortly screened the night lamp from his eyes, thinking he had fallen asleep. Behind the young airman's closed lids a jumble of thoughts were beating in his brain. When Doctor Potter came to read the chart at the head of his bed in the morning he scrutinized it for a second time.

"Tut! tut!" he muttered. Then: "What is the meaning of this sudden rise in temperature? Didn't you sleep well last night, Mr. Sanderson?"

CHAPTER III

CROSSED WIRES

There was a tiny apartment not too far from the hospital that Belinda Melnotte called home for these two years of her hospital training. It was presided over by Aunt Roberta.

Aunt Roberta was a short woman of brown complexion, with a buxom figure laced tightly into corsets that kept her very erect even in a "sleepy hollow" chair. She was always neatly gowned, neatly shod, and displayed well-kept hands and a spotless apron. She did the work of the apartment herself.

One afternoon and evening in each fortnight Belinda spent at home. There was a great contrast in character between aunt and niece. Aunt Roberta was all French; her niece displayed some Teutonic traits of character.

Grandfather Melnotte and Grandfather Genau had both come to America as young men. Belinda, as a second generation American girl, held few prejudices of either nation. But Aunt Roberta had no good word now for the Genaus.

"Alboche," she frequently said. "A brutal, stupid people. Your Grandfather Genau was a gross man—he ate and drank e-nor-mously. He died of an apoplexy."

"Poor man!" sighed her niece.

"And your Grandmother Genau was huge—she suffered of an avoirdupois. She would have won a prize for flesh in a street fair—cer-tain-lee!"

"I fear I may be too stout," Belinda would say mildly.

Aunt Roberta had spent all her girlhood in a French convent at Montreal. Then, for many years, she had lived in Paris. Until of late she had spoken English so seldom that she used the language in a way all her own—not brokenly or with much accent, but with most amusing transpositions. She would have gladly spoken French altogether, only when she undertook to do so Belinda would not reply.

"I am American—American, I tell you, Auntie!" the girl would cry. "We speak English here in New York. That I am both German and French by blood is enough. I will speak neither of those languages now—unless I am obliged to."

She had refused to listen to her aunt's diatribes against the Germans since the war had begun; but in truth she felt the two nationalities of her forebears warring within her heart. She pitied both peoples with all her sympathetic nature. She thought much on the unfortunates struggling in the battle lines. Her hospital work broadened her sympathy for all suffering. It is not always so. Some it makes callous.

As the end of Belinda Melnotte's two years of hospital probation drew near, she felt stronger cords drawing her toward those centers of activity, the field hospitals of France and Belgium. But she had not mentioned this feeling to any one.

Those related to her by ties of blood were fighting on both sides in the great struggle. There were two young cousins in the German ranks in Northern France whom she had known and played with when they were all three children—Paul Genau and Carl Baum. Her mother had taken her to Germany several times.

In America Belinda had few relatives now save Aunt Roberta. After her father's death she would have been quite alone had it not been for the brisk, taut little tante. Mr. Melnotte had left no great fortune to his only child; merely a comfortable income from well-placed investments, enough for her simple needs and to spare for Aunt Roberta.

Although Aunt Roberta's tendencies were strongly aristocratic, she admired Belinda's independent and practical nature. She was proud of her niece for taking up a profession. Not that she expected Belinda would remain in the work after obtaining her diploma.

"If we were in our own suffering coun-tree," she sighed frequently, "your training and experience might be of value—yes! The poor soldiers of France! Ah, they need the nurses! This great and rich United States, that owes so much to la belle France, doles out a little money and a few blankets to our poilus—like giving coals and bread to beggarwomen while France fights the battles of the world!"

Between such opinions as these of Tante Roberta and those expressed by Mrs. Blythe, the hospital matron, Belinda was puzzled. Practical as she was, her temperament was not ordinarily assertive. She was not given to forming logical opinions for herself, save on moral topics.

Aunt Roberta she knew would be delighted to return to France.

"This coun-tree, pah!" the taut little Frenchwoman would say, her gestures vigorous, "is too commercial. There is little art here, nor do the women even know how to dress. Their bonnets—pooh! They are built by the tens of thousands to sell for ten dollars each. Oh, oui, and their gowns! They are sold by the gross, all of one pattern. These Americans have no air about them—no chic."

"I am an American," stoutly maintained Belinda in answer to this.

But she sometimes wondered if, after all, she was truly American. The two hereditary natures within her seemed tugging in opposite ways. She really had but small affiliation (so she thought) with America and its citizenship.

The great milestones of history venerated by Americans of ancient lineage meant little to her. She had journeyed with college friends to Plymouth Rock and felt no thrill. The tall shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument was to her merely an observatory point. The spot where the first American blood was shed in the Revolution inspired her with no pride of race.

All that had followed in the later decades of United States history after all seemed of small moment to Belinda Melnotte. The years of struggle to maintain the Union and to free from slavery the whites as well as the blacks of the South were merely incidents she had read about in school. Her two grandfathers had come to the country while the Civil War was in progress; but the struggle had meant nothing to them save as it offered greater opportunity to make money. And it meant little now to Belinda.

This country—these United States of ours—is indeed a melting pot for the nations of the earth; but the fire under the pot sputters like a handful of green thorns and the brew of citizenship infuses slowly. Love of country seldom develops solely from gratitude; it is when one is called upon to give that one learns to love. And Belinda Melnotte had never given much of even her thought to this, her native land.

She felt a strange and growing unrest as the time of her graduation from the hospital drew near. She secretly feared, however, that this uncertainty and indecision had something to do with her interest in the private patient she was nursing.

The Aero Club had ordered everything done for Sanderson that could be done to make comfortable a person in his situation. When he was well enough to have visitors there were several men who came to see the aviator who were either fellow-airmen or were interested in flying.

Belinda suspected that Sanderson was one of a number of courageous young men who were schooling themselves for aviation work of a particular character and for a particular purpose. Just what this special work was she did not know, for Sanderson and his friends were secretive.

She found these visitors to Room A-a very interesting, however; and they made much of Sandy's pretty nurse. Gay as she was with them, Belinda kept a sharp oversight of her patient; and if she saw him growing tired she hurried the visitors out without much ado.

One of the young aviator's brothers, who lived near enough to visit the patient on more than one occasion, intimated he suspected Frank of feeling more than a passing interest in the nurse. She, however, was not supposed to overhear the observation.

"Who wouldn't?" Frank Sanderson stoutly responded.

"Look out!" his brother warned him. "If Stella hears of it——"

"Stella! What Stella doesn't know will never trouble her," the man in bed said quickly, and in no very pleasant tone. "By the way, how is she—and the kiddies?"

"All right. Hasn't she been to see you?"

"I should hope not!" The nurse at the window, busy with the work in her lap, covertly glanced at her patient. His face was flushed and beclouded. "I won't have her come here—now remember that, Jim! But you might assure her that I am all right."

"Humph! Play buffer for you, is it?"

"Well, give a look in at the kiddies, anyway. They are not to blame."

"Right-o!" agreed Jim, and soon departed.

From that hour Sanderson found his nurse not quite the same as she had been. He soon recovered his usual cheery manner. Not so Belinda. She had raised a certain barrier between them, and that barrier he was unable to surmount.

Still sick, he peevishly laid it to the influence of the black-browed surgeon. Or was it that, now he was better, the nurse was merely following her usual method of "freezing" a too ardent patient?

He ventured a query to Miss Trivett one night; for although one could not really like the night nurse, she was trustworthy.

"I don't know what I've done to offend Miss Melnotte," Sanderson said honestly. "But she keeps me at a distance——"

"Oh, my! Little-boy-crying-for-the-moon!" the nurse said, half in scorn and half in sympathy. "Are you going to prove yourself no wiser than the rest of them? And you an aviator! Bah!"

"Well, I'm hanged if that ugly Dutchman's half good enough for her, even if he did fix me up!" Sanderson growled.

"Of course he isn't. What man is ever good enough for a woman?" was the tart rejoinder.

"The Lord help the fellow who gets you, Miss Trivett!" Sanderson said with feeling.

"No. You are wrong. I know my own weakness," sighed the wise, if plain, nurse. "If I should marry, I would love him so much that he might walk upon me if he wished."

It was not by any determined and set method that Belinda Melnotte kept Sanderson at a distance. She merely followed the calm path of her duty as usual, betraying nothing to her fellow-nurses of what fretted her spirit.

A few days more and The Head would put into her hand the certificate for which she had served two hard years. A dozen besides Sue Blaine and herself were to be graduated.

As there was some operating-room work to be done, Belinda was excused from attendance on the convalescent in Room A-a. Sanderson discovered this when another nurse came to his call in the morning. She was a probationer and had a year yet to serve.

"Say, where's Miss Melnotte?" he demanded.

"She's busy." The nurse told him why.

"Isn't she coming back to me?"

"I don't suppose so. She's not going to work in this hospital any more."

The aviator spent a gloomy forenoon. Then he wrote some letters, called for Mrs. Blythe, and arranged with her for his departure from the hospital the next day.

When Belinda stopped at Room A-a the second evening to learn how he was getting on, the room was empty save for the attendant who was cleaning up. Sanderson had been gone an hour.

CHAPTER IV

A DECISION

There was a florist's box in Belinda's little sleeping room on the last day of her occupancy of it. She was almost afraid to open it at first, for she feared the card within might bear Doctor Herschall's name.

However, when she had opened it, the roses it contained, which had cost a dollar a stem, she distributed with lavish hand among the graduating class. That popular piece of fiction, just then being discussed by the book reviews, "The Flying Faun," with Frank Sanderson's autograph on the flyleaf, she hid away, showing it to nobody.

She was unable to put an accusing finger upon a single thing he had done or said that was discourteous. He was by no means one of those hybrid creatures—neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring—known as "a lady's man." He owned to merely a natural gentleness in his conduct toward women; and by nature he possessed much of the cheerful awkwardness of a Newfoundland pup.

Belinda's instincts of motherliness—largely developed in all girls of her placid and sweet temperament—had really drawn her toward her patient at first because of these boyish traits. He seemed to her quite unspoiled; there was nothing artificial about him. If his glances boldly betrayed his admiration for his nurse, his lips uttered only the most considerate expressions of approval. He had never taken advantage of his situation as so many of her patients did. Miss Trivett was right. Beauty in a nurse is not always an asset.

Yet Belinda felt in her heart that Frank Sanderson had not been honest with her. Had she not overheard his brother's remark she would never have suspected the aviator of being a married man.

The "Stella" mentioned by the brothers, though the aviator's wife and evidently the mother of the "kiddies," was plainly not beloved. Either the couple were legally separated, or their married life was a farce. Only on that single occasion had Sanderson mentioned the woman—and never to his nurse.

The discovery had halted instantly any advance Belinda might have contemplated toward a closer friendship with the aviator. There had already been intimate moments between them when youth had called strongly to romance—when each had lifted for a little the veil which hid those secret lives we all live.

Belinda had thought she saw what lay behind Frank Sanderson's reckless bearing and volatile spirits—and approved. There were deeper currents in the aviator's soul than the shallows he showed to the world in general. She felt that he had a far more serious reason for taking up the perilous work of aviation than he was willing ordinarily to admit.

On the other hand, she had hinted at some portion of her doubts and uncertainties for the future in her disclosures to Sanderson. He did not understand entirely what she meant; had he done so he would never have hastened away from the hospital, accepting the night nurse's observations for facts, and leaving only the flowers and the book as a reminder of his friendly intercourse with Belinda.

When the girl bade the matron and her particular friends among the nursing staff good-by that last evening and left the hospital by the side exit with her bag, it was her fate to meet Doctor Herschall likewise going out. Or had he waited for her?

"We lose you, do we, Miss Belinda?" he said, taking her bag with his usual assurance. "We shall miss you—none more than I, Fräulein, I do assure you."

"You are very kind, Doctor," murmured the girl, wishing that she might rid herself of him.

But she had no inspiration for his dismissal. His way could not possibly lie in the direction of her home, yet he took that turning as a matter of course.

She could not afterwards have repeated their desultory conversation, even in part. She was confused and nervous—as she always was in the surgeon's company.

"I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you and your good aunt, Fräulein," declared he, "and at an early date."

"I—I think I may go away for a change and rest," she stammered.

"All the more reason for my making my call soon, then," said Doctor Herschall coolly. "I have something of importance to say to you."

"Oh, I feel you would better not come, Doctor Herschall!" she cried desperately. "Really, I do not feel fit for—for company. I am quite done up."

"I hope I shall not miss you when I call, Miss Belinda," he repeated, his keen eyes searching her averted face. She was looking at his empty right hand, its long, pliant fingers working spasmodically, as they did when he was in earnest. She realized that they were wonderfully able, dexterous fingers; yet when she saw them work in that nervous manner she always thought of them as clutching in a horrid way for an enemy's throat.

"If I should miss you," purred the Herr Doktor, "I shall come again and yet again. My time is not altogether my own, as you know; but no sacrifice would I count too great, Miss Belinda, for the pleasure of your society."

He left her at the door and strode away. Belinda's cheeks burned furiously and she bit her lip to keep back the sobs. She was both enraged and afraid.

He took so much for granted! There was no use in trying to show the Herr Doktor his place.

"I hate him!" she gasped.

His assurance and masterfulness almost cowed the girl's spirit. Belinda Melnotte was not one who ordinarily shrank before any human being; the influence of the black-browed surgeon upon her mind was almost uncanny.

"I hate him!" she repeated. "I wish I might never see him again!"

However, she felt it would be impossible to refuse Doctor Herschall admittance when he called. She could easily imagine what the visit would be like. Aunt Roberta would refuse to sit in the room with him. To the little Frenchwoman the big Prussian doctor was pariah. Nor could Belinda play neutral between them.

Therefore she gladly seized the opportunity offered the next evening to escape from the house. Somebody called her up and asked her to attend a neighborhood Red Cross chapter meeting.

"Just to countenance the affair, you know, my dear. We are endeavoring to get dollar members and interest people in our work in France."

Tante was willing to attend, albeit in a critical spirit. She did not believe that anything of real worth was being done by Americans for "the dear poilus of la belle France."

Belinda went, however, with an open mind. Already she had contemplated Red Cross work, although she really knew very little about it. To-night an earnest man, just from the battlefields of war-wrecked Northern France, addressed the rather apathetic audience. In the summer of 1916 it was difficult to find an audience in America that was otherwise regarding any phase of the great war. The speaker was a grim-looking little man, ugly and in earnest; yet there was a saving twinkle in his eye.

"I am here for the specific purpose of getting as many dollar bills out of your purses as I can to-night," he said in the course of his remarks. "A dollar bill is a little thing after all. You pay it over and it does its work. But the thrill of giving it does not last long.

"Do you want—" he cried, rising on his toes and suddenly smiting the table before him with a clenched fist—"do you want to get a lasting thrill—one that may last a year—two years—perhaps to the very hour of your death? Then, enlist with us. We need men and women alike—men and women of pluck and who possess sanctified common sense.

"You are needed—needed right in the battlefield hospitals I have tried to tell you about to-night. We want men and women of some experience and proven ability—not failures; for those who are failures in one walk in life are almost always failures in any other position. Our recruits must be modest, even-tempered, inventive and enterprising, ready to go anywhere and do anything upon the shortest possible notice.

"We need the best of you, and the best there is in you. Nor can we pay you, or offer you anything but a modicum of fame. You will hear of the Red Cross doing much; but the names of the actual doers of these things are seldom exploited.

"It is, indeed, an enlistment in an army of peace, working to alleviate the horrors of armies at war. There are no medals, no honorable mention, no promotions on the field of valor by brevet or otherwise. And we demand perfect obedience to stern rules, and that each enlisted man and woman shall give every ounce of strength of mind and body he or she possesses.

"Now, this is the opportunity I offer you, besides the chance to give dollars to the Red Cross. We want men and women who will work without salary and without hope of seeing their names or pictures in the papers. Come on and sign up for the work. But don't crowd."

He sat down suddenly amid the half nervous titter of a part of his audience. They did not crowd. The workers circulating through the hall gathered some harvest of money and several promises of future contributions. When the meeting was adjourned Belinda left Aunt Roberta to have a word with the lean little hospital-worn man.

"I wish to serve," she said.

"Yes—Miss——?" He scrutinized her with growing approval.

"Melnotte. I am my own mistress. I hold a nurse's diploma." She told him the name of the hospital. "I can afford to pay my own expenses."

"And you wish to serve—where?"

"In France. I speak the language."

"When can you be ready, Mademoiselle?"

"To-morrow."

"Good! The Belle o' Perth sails the day after. There are others of our forces going by her. It can be arranged. You know that the crossing will be dangerous?"

"More dangerous than the work on the battlefields?" she asked him quietly.

"Gad! No, Mademoiselle."

"Tell me what to do—how to go about it," she said simply.

Afterwards, when the girl had gone back to Aunt Roberta, the man most heartily congratulated himself.

"If I haven't done anything else on this trip, I've netted a good one there!" he thought.

But how much he influenced Belinda's decision, how much her dislike and fear of Doctor Herschall urged her into the work, or how much her disappointment in Frank Sanderson had to do with it, it would be difficult to say. Most important decisions arise from mixed motives. She did not discuss this phase of it at all. She merely said to Aunt Roberta:

"We are going."

"Ma foi! Where?"

"To France—to Paris first."

"Oui! Oui! My child, those are the sweetest words you have ever said to me!"

Aunt Roberta asked no further questions.

CHAPTER V

THE RUNAWAY SHIPMASTER

Frank Sanderson rode to the North River pier in a taxicab and Jim, his next older brother, who had always been a good chum of the aviator's, rode with him.

"Good of you to leave everything to see the last of me, Jim," the sandy one observed.

"By Jove, boy! I've a feeling that maybe it is the last I shall see of you. I wish you were not so headstrong, Sandy."

The latter grinned at him.

"Seems to me I've heard something like that before. But it isn't that I'm so headstrong, old chap. You'd do the same if you were in my place. I'm foot-loose——"

"How about Stella and the kids?" put in Jim wickedly.

"They are amply provided for, as you know. I shall miss the kiddies, of course—cunning little busters! But Stella——"

"Is going to take on some when she knows you have gone."

"As long as the steamship is off Sandy Hook when she learns the Great Secret, what care I?" returned the aviator, shrugging his shoulders. "And do, for goodness sake, talk of something else. There may be a swift and messy end before me, but at least I sha'n't be talked to death by a Flora McFlimsey over there in France."

"No," Jim admitted. "There is something in that, I allow. However, I'll not weep over you yet, my boy. You've pulled through many a tight place and escaped many a threatened danger."

The other nodded. "I don't expect anything more serious to happen to me serving in the Lafayette Escadrille than might occur if I remained here and continued to make exhibition flights. Over there I'll be with the finest bunch of fellows in the world, and be doing something."

"Ye-es," hesitated his brother. "But what are you going to do it for Sandy?"

"Mixed reasons," returned the aviator frankly. "It's exciting, of course. Then, there is one's desire, when one can, to pitch in and help people who are putting up such a tremendously plucky fight as the French are. There's another, too."

"Yes?"

"It's coming to us. Before this thing is settled—war, I mean—and settled for good and all, Uncle Sam is bound to get into it."

"I'm afraid you are right, Sandy," sighed the more conservative Jim. "But I hate to see it come."

"Of course. All you conservative business men do. But you'd better be prepared," the younger man said, wagging his head. "And that's my main object in going to the war zone, after all."

"Preparedness?"

"In a way. When we get into the war—this war, or a war—the United States will need men with flying experience such as can be gained only in actual warfare. If I am spared," added the young man simply, "I shall be ready for service."

"Gad! That's right, Sandy. It's rather fine of you, too. But—it's so uncertain."

"Life is uncertain at best," returned the aviator, with his usual cheerfulness. "We'll look on the brighter side of it, if you please. This is no wake, Jim. The corpse is very much alive at present writing."

"That shoulder all right?"

"All right."

"They certainly did well by you at that hospital."

"I was the little white-headed boy there, for a fact," agreed the younger man.

"The big surgeon—what do they call him?"

"Herschall," growled the other, with suddenly clouded face.

"A brainy fellow," observed Jim. "And that pretty nurse—Miss Melnotte was she called? I had an idea you were smitten there, Sandy, and smitten hard."

"You never can judge by looking at a toad how far he will hop," returned the aviator coolly. If he had partially confided in the tart Miss Trivett, he was not wearing his heart on his sleeve for everybody to read.

"Well," Jim said soberly, "a man in your position has no business to try to tie up any woman's affections."

The sailing of even a large ship from the port of New York was no longer, in these war times, a gala occasion or the beginning of a pleasant sea adventure for its passengers. In general, parties coming aboard to speed those sailing were discouraged. A crowd was no more allowed to gather on the dock.

For this reason, perhaps, Frank Sanderson did not make the discovery when he went aboard that on an upper deck forward was a bevy of girls whom he certainly would have recognized. Instead, he and Jim sat in his stateroom and smoked until just before the ship's departure.

It was a cheerful party that he missed, and Sue Blaine was the life of it.

"My dear Belinda!" she cried, "you were always one of the plucky ones. It makes poor little me feel like a hap'orth o' nothing! But two years of hospital slavery is enough for me. And just think of what you are going up against now! The French wounded will be worse than those poor fellows they brought us out of that subway explosion that time—do you remember?"

"I have thought of all that," Belinda said quietly. "I have thought of their need and what I can do to help them. Oh, yes, Sue—I have thought of it."

"Trust Miss Melnotte for being both calm and literal," laughed somebody.

"Goodness, yes!" cried the volatile Sue Blaine, yet looking at her friend admiringly. "But I don't see why you do it. If you were crossed in love, you couldn't be more desperate."

"Mercy!" gasped Miss Trivett, who was present, and who smiled at Belinda, though her shrewd eyes were ready for the betrayal of any secret. "Not our Belinda—never!"

The Red Cross recruit remained her usually placid self, even when the mischievous Sue Blaine went on to say:

"Of course, it wouldn't be the Herr Doktor? He will be desolate, I am sure."

"More likely one of her private patients," another of the party suggested. "Oh! The flying-man! I'm sure his roses were beautiful. I have mine at home yet."

"Be sure," stated Miss Trivett, "that if Miss Melnotte had cared anything for that boy you would have got none of his roses."

Belinda remained proof against all the raillery. The whistle blew and the girls hastened toward the nearest gangway after bidding their friend an affectionate good-by. But Sue Blaine came running back, her eyes dancing and increased mischief lighting her piquant face.

"Oh, you sharper!" she whispered, pinching Belinda's plump arm. "And you never said a word!"

"About what, dear?" her friend asked amazedly, yet kissing her again.

"He's here!" Sue Blaine hissed dramatically.

"For pity's sake! Who is here? Not—not Doctor Herschall?" and Belinda did not very successfully hide her anxiety.

"Nonsense! No! That perfectly splendid airman, Sandy Sanderson!"

"On this boat?" murmured Belinda feebly.

"Yes, ma'am! And he's going, too. His brother has just bidden him good-by and gone ashore. Didn't you know he was to sail? What fun! Wait till I tell the Herr Doktor. Wouldn't you like to see his face when I do?" And the mischief-loving Sue Blaine ran away before Belinda could make reply.

At least, she told herself, she was forewarned. She would not meet Frank Sanderson unexpectedly. He could not, of course, have known of her decision to join the Red Cross. Undoubtedly his own plans for the voyage had long since been made. Her sailing on the Belle o' Perth could not have influenced him.

Nearly all of the visitors had gone ashore, but there was some delay in getting under way. Belinda, in a meditative mood, strolled along the deck. She was thinking of Sanderson and was somewhat startled when she heard his name mentioned.

She glanced to one side. A group of college boys were chatting gaily, just getting ready to leave the ship.

"Sanderson is on board, but Nevins didn't come," said one, disappointedly. "Too bad! I was counting on giving Dicky some good advice," and he laughed.

"Better give Sandy the advice," broke in another. "He needs it. The idea of an aviator like him tying fast to a girl like Stella!"

"And those kids!" added a third college boy.

"I understand he promised Jerry he'd do it. He was under obligations to Jerry. He just about had to marry her."

"Obligations be hanged! Think I'd marry a girl like Stella? All she thinks about is her looks. And she can talk down anybody she meets. Nixy, not for yours truly! I pity Sandy, I do!"

"We all do," affirmed a fourth of the group.

"Maybe that's why he's going to France—to escape from her."

"Like as not. If I was tied to a skirt like that I'd want to hike to the North Pole!"

The college boys passed on, out of Belinda's hearing and left the ship. The Red Cross nurse shrank back, her cheeks burning. She had heard every word. She walked on in a more thoughtful mood than ever.

Aunt Roberta always remained in her stateroom, and usually in her berth, until she was "attuned," as she termed it, to the motion of the ship. There was little, anyway, at this sailing, to keep one on deck. The ship was towed out into the stream and started seaward with no band playing and no cheering from the dock. Only the whistled farewells of other craft were as cheerful as usual.

The ship's lower decks were piled tier upon tier with stores, and she was bound for a French port. She would be a fair mark for a German submarine if one crossed her path. Although the Germans were supposedly giving the crews and passengers of merchant ships a chance for their lives before sinking such craft, an experience in an open boat, even in calm, pleasant weather, was not to be looked upon lightly.

Therefore, those who sailed upon the Belle o' Perth when she left the port of New York supposedly had serious reason for making the voyage. Later, however, Belinda discovered among the first cabin group one individual who had come along for the excitement of the trip.

She met this person at dinner on the first evening out. Belinda was alone, Aunt Roberta being served with tea and toast in her room. The first officer, who was a socially inclined soul and an American, could not bear to see so pretty a girl eating her dinner in silence. On the other side of Aunt Roberta's empty chair was a nattily dressed old gentleman, with a great shock of white hair and a moustache equally white. His clothing was blue and of naval cut.

"Miss Melnotte," said the first officer, reading her card, "I want you to know Cap'n Raphael Dexter," and he nodded to the old gentleman. "Now, you be nice to her, Cap'n Raphe. Miss Melnotte's all alone just now."

"Honored, Miss Melnotte," declared the captain, with old-fashioned courtesy. "If I can say anything to help keep your mind off your troubles, I shall be glad."

His face was very brown and there were innumerable wrinkles about the eyes, as is usually the case with plainsmen and seamen—those who gaze across great distances; but the eyes themselves twinkled liked cut-steel beads.

"How do you know I have any troubles, Captain Dexter?" she asked.

"Why, I am the only person on this craft, I opine, who is travelin' for pleasure," he said, watching her quizzically. "People don't sail in war time—at least, not this war time—without bein' in trouble of some sort. Eh?"

With his head on one side as he asked the question, he looked somewhat like a shrewd old cockatoo.

"It is true I am not crossing for pleasure," she admitted, and told him her object in sailing for the shores of France.

"Plucky girl! Yes, the French are making a wonderfully good fight. We couldn't have done better ourselves," declared this staunch American. "I'm Yankee—the real stock. Clear back to the Revolution and beyond. I fought in the Rebellion. Would you think it? Powder monkey on Admiral Farragut's flagship," he pursued proudly. "Enlisted and lied about my age at twelve—and for a liar I made a pretty good fighter," he chuckled. "The admiral himself said that when I was laid up in sick-bay with a bit of shell in my leg. I carry that scar—and a limp in damp weather—to this day."

"Oh, you have seen real fighting at sea, then?" Belinda said, with interest.

"Yes, ma'am! Hist!" whispered Captain Dexter, leaning nearer. "That's why I am aboard this Belle o' Perth."

She looked her surprise and misunderstanding.

"Hopin' to see a scrap. Bless you, Miss! I was retired from the sea—let alone from the navy—long ago. My darters are all pacifists—three of 'em. Prudence, Patience and Penelope. That was my wife's doin's." Vast disgust was expressed both in voice and features.

"What was?" asked Belinda, finding her interest in the curious old gentleman growing.

"Namin' those darters of mine." He always gave the word the old-fashioned New England pronunciation, although his speech was not much marred by a local twang. "I always managed to be at sea when the children were born and she had 'em christened one o' them outlandish names before I could make port. Long v'y'ges in those days. And we never had any boys.

"I could make up my mind," said Captain Dexter grimly, "that if there was a new baby on hand when I got home, it would be a gal and would have some milk-and-water name tacked on to it. By Hannah! I was always a fightin' man myself; but my wife ought to have been a Quaker."

"What would have been your choice of names for your girls?" Belinda asked, much amused.

"Something like Joan or Brunhild, Minerva or Judith—regular upstandin' names, those," he said promptly. "You see, Miss Melnotte, I believe the names children bear help form their characters. All my darters—Prudence, Patience and Penelope—are just as wishy-washy as the names sound."

"Oh, Captain Dexter!"

"Fact. Take it right now. All three opposed to war for any reason. Full up with foolishness about this peace business—and peace at any price, too! By Hannah! scare't to death at me goin' to sea again—want me to settle down ashore like a tabby cat beside the kitchen stove."

"I presume they think you have done your share, Captain."

"My share! Ain't I as spry as ever I was? What's seventy-odd? My family have always run old Methuselah a close race. I had one uncle who lived to a hundred and three—and then choked to death on a fishbone!"

"You surely are well preserved," Belinda said flatteringly.

"'Preserved'! I'm pickled, Miss Melnotte. Pickled in salt brine and salt air. And nothin' must do—there wasn't any comfort for me—till I'd promised them three darters that I wouldn't sail a ship on the sea again. But," said I, "you can't keep me off the water. I'll take no active part; but the feel of deck planks under my feet I must have once in a while."

"They agreed to that," chuckled Captain Dexter. "Thought I'd be satisfied, I s'pose, to take a trip now and again on a canal-boat! By Hannah! they don't know where I am now—and won't know till some time to-morrow when the rural mail carrier gets to Penelope's house. She's the first one of the three on his route out of Old Saybrook."

"Why, then, you've run away!" exclaimed Belinda.

"Run away?" the captain snorted. "Me, a shipmaster of forty year standin'? By Hannah! I've given my darters the slip, I do allow. If they had their way with me I'd be wearin' a cap and knittin' tidies on the sunny side of the porch this very minute.

"I'm goin' across," concluded Captain Dexter, "to see something of this war. They can't scare me with talk about German raiders nor submarines. The way it looks to me, them undersea boats are only play-toys. They might sneak up on a ship's heels and do some damage; but mostly they wouldn't stand a show in an open fight with a craft like this, if she's properly handled."

"Oh, I hope we shall not meet a submarine!" the girl said earnestly.

"Well, I dunno as I can join you there, Miss," and the old shipmaster's grin was a good deal like that of a mischievous boy. "I've always wanted to see all the new things as they came out—telegraph, telephone, automobiles, these flying machines and all of Edison's wonders. Now I'd like to clap my old eyes on one o' these U-boats, as they call 'em—and see it in action, too!"

CHAPTER VI

FELLOW VOYAGERS

Belinda had seen Frank Sanderson at the captain's table; but he had not spied her. She sat with her back to him while listening to the talk of the Yankee shipmaster. The aviator arose and strolled out on deck without glancing in her direction. Then she went to see how Aunt Roberta fared.

Of course, the Red Cross recruit did not expect to remain undiscovered to Sanderson for the entire voyage. Indeed, she was not altogether sure she wished this. If he chanced to read the list of passengers he would be sure to see her name. But she preferred to choose her own time for first speaking with him.

Belinda Melnotte was quite sure the aviator's reason for crossing the ocean was somewhat the same as her own—a desire to help the embattled French. His intention was to join those other American flying men over there and do actual fighting for the Allies.

Because of the strict neutral attitude of the United States at that time, these volunteer aviators could not fly under their own flag; but the so-called Lafayette Escadrille was doing notable work for what Aunt Roberta so vigorously called "la patrie."

The general conversation in the saloon—all over the ship, in fact—was about the war. After Belinda had assured herself of Aunt Roberta's comfort, she slipped into her coat and sought the open deck. Every group she passed was eagerly discussing some phase of the great struggle.

Fire Island light was already dropping below the horizon. She noted that there were few lights on deck—by no means as many as are usually displayed on a passenger liner. Ordinarily in the evening, these big ships sparkle with chains of lamps.

She saw the wireless operator in his house amidships. Unexpectedly the poles began to spark and crackle. A message was being received. She saw the mate who had introduced her to Captain Dexter run to the door of the wireless room for the message.

A minute later bell signals were sounding all over the great, throbbing ship. Several series of lights were snuffed out. The stewards went along the corridors rapping on stateroom doors and ordering lights shrouded or shades drawn at the ports. It was an order that bred fear in many hearts. Peril, unknown and from an unknown direction, threatened.

Belinda met the old shipmaster cheerfully pacing the deck and whistling softly to himself.

"Oh, Captain Dexter!" she demanded, tucking her hand into the crook of the arm he offered her with his old-fashioned air of courtesy, "what is the matter? What could that message have been, do you suppose?"

"I calc'late," said the runaway captain, "that we just got wind of a submarine somewhere in these waters. The mate says she was spied from Nantucket lightship and that the news was relayed across to us. Maybe, however, she was just one of our own subs out on scout duty."

"Do you suppose she would attack us so near shore?" Belinda asked.

"Not knowin' the submarine's orders, I couldn't say, ma'am," declared Captain Dexter. "But whatever them undersea navigators are told to do, they do. To my mind they come nearer bein' marionettes with the strings pulled by their superiors at home than any human bein's since the world began. The blind obedience of Hannibal's hordes you read about, or that of the fanatic Mussulmen, never had nothing on these Germans. They've been trained for generations to let other folks think for 'em."

"Oh, no! Oh, no, Captain Dexter! We think for ourselves!" cried Belinda hurriedly.

"We, Miss?"

"Oh, I know I have a French name. But some of my people were German. I can sympathize—I do sympathize—with my mother's people."

"Yet you are going to nurse the French wounded?"

"But I sympathize with the poor poilus much more than with the Germans," she said, shaking her head. "I cannot feel bitterness for either side, Captain Dexter. But I hate the war itself."

"Then you are more nearly neutral than most of us," commented the old shipmaster shrewdly.

They paced the deck together while the throbbing ship drove on through the sea and the night, an unlighted bulk upon the face of the waters. The twinkling stars were all that lighted their way. Patches of the sea here and there were faintly phosphorescent; otherwise the heaving water was scarcely visible from the high deck.

"It is mysterious—almost terrifying," the girl said in a low voice.

"So it is," the captain rejoined in his brisk way. "I've felt it oft and again when I was pacin' my own quarter on a moonless night—for a sailin' ship is never lighted like a steamer. I've looked off over the water and wondered what was under it, and imagined more monsters than ever lived back in those early ages that the scientific books tell us about."

"But you never expected a submarine to bob up out of the sea," the girl suggested.

"Not much!" he chuckled. "Once I thought I saw a sea serpent."

"Really! And what was it?"

"A school of porpoises chasing each other, head to tail. And maybe we won't see anything more excitin' than that this trip."

It was not until the following day that Belinda met Frank Sanderson. The submarine scare of the first evening at sea was all but forgotten in the morning sunshine and with the Belle o' Perth plowing through a perfectly placid sea.

The calm was not sufficient, however, to tempt Aunt Roberta on deck—or even out of her stateroom.

"An absolutely horizontal posture for forty-eight or sixty hours after leaving port is the only safeguard against mal de mer," the Frenchwoman declared. "How you can be so reckless I do not see, Belinda. It is almost a crime for a woman to possess such robust health."

So, after breakfasting with Aunt Roberta in the stateroom, Belinda sought the deck alone, and under the pilotage of a deck steward found her chair in the lee of a forward house. It was a sheltered situation in all weathers and there were few other passengers in view when she settled herself comfortably in it.

Indeed, she had met nobody as yet save the Yankee shipmaster; and he scorned such artificialities of life aboard ship as reclining chairs. He paced the bridge with a friendly watch-officer, or encircled the ship on a "two-hour constitutional" for exercise.

"I couldn't sit mum by myself in one o' these chairs and do nothing," he confessed to the nurse. "I'm not a readin' man. Long watches below at sea I used to play push—and I play it yet."

"What is 'push'?" she asked curiously.

"It's seaman's solitaire. Ain't once in five hundred times it comes out right. But it keeps the mind occupied. And that's a blessin', as you'd very soon learn if you was master of a windjammer, months and months away from port."

"With the expectation of another daughter arriving during your absence whom your wife would be sure to christen to displease you," Belinda suggested slyly.

"By Hannah! Yes. And more'n that. Why, I've seen the time at sea when I've buried all my friends and relations—in my mind, of course—and preached their funeral sermons. It does beat all how a person that's lonesome will get so low in his thoughts."

Belinda did not feel in the least lonely, despite the fact that Aunt Roberta remained in her berth. Although there were not many first cabin passengers and the opportunity for meeting pleasant people was therefore limited, there was much else about the ship that interested the girl. The sea itself was always changing, and she had not crossed often enough for the small details of life on board ship to bore her.

Before she had read a dozen pages in her book (it was "The Flying Faun" she had brought with her) she saw the trim figure of Frank Sanderson coming down the deck. The aviator was not a large man—not many men who follow the flying game are large men—but Belinda had already noticed that he was very well built, and walked "with an air," as Aunt Roberta would have said.

He was looking at the cards on the empty chairs, searching for his own. Suddenly he spied it, and without troubling the deck steward started to move the chair to a position that better suited him.

It was at this juncture that he raised his eyes and found himself looking squarely into Belinda Melnotte's brown orbs. She saw him start, pale a little, and then the blood flooded into his neck and face until the sprinkle of little freckles across the bridge of his nose—that looked as though they had been shaken out of a pepperbox—became a bright copper color.

"Miss Melnotte!" he gasped.

"Bring your chair here, Mr. Sanderson," she said with perfect composure.

The suggestion relieved a very awkward moment for her. She felt that his greeting might be too warm. But a man with a deck-chair in his arms cannot display over-exuberance of feeling upon greeting an acquaintance. And then—Belinda was so perfectly self-possessed.

"Why, I had no idea you were aboard, Miss Melnotte! Er—are you traveling alone?" was Sanderson's first query, when he had placed his chair beside her.

"My aunt is crossing with me," she said. "But I am not so surprised to see you."

"No?"

"I fancied you had it in your mind to join your comrades already in France."

"And you?"

She told him of her sudden decision. He beamed upon her.

"That's bully!" he cried. "The Red Cross is doing all kinds of good work. I honor you nursing recruits, especially when so many of you do not favor war."

"Who does favor war, Mr. Sanderson?" asked the girl seriously. "Surely the poor men fighting in the trenches are not in favor of it. Their masters all publicly deplore it. And the neutral peoples condemn it utterly. Still——"

"Still Mars reigns," he interposed. "To take their word for it, nobody is to blame and nobody wants to continue fighting. Yet the munition factories and gun works keep busy. There will be plenty of work for you good women—and plenty for me to do too," he added in a lower tone.

"It is so dangerous—your work," she sighed.

"I was just thinking that about yours," he returned, smiling. "You will work within sound—perhaps within reach—of the guns if you serve in the field hospitals."

"While you will be in the very midst of battle," she returned more lightly. "Yet you would not falter?"

"No-o. Nor I wouldn't have you, as long as you have signed up for the job," he admitted. "You know, we Americans have our national reputation to keep up. We aren't supposed to get cold feet."

"I am not sure that I am an American," she murmured.

"Why, of course you are! I've thought a good bit about what you said once of your mixed ancestry, and how you felt the German part of you and the French part of you at war. I reckon such a mixture makes exceedingly good American timber, after all."

"I wish you might prove that thesis to my satisfaction, Mr. Sanderson."

"Why, if the German part of you is dissatisfied with the French part of you, and vice versa, then throw the opinions and prejudices of both away and declare yourself an out-and-out Yankee. As they used to say in the old-time revival meetings, 'Claim the blessing, and it's yours!'"

"Oh, Mr. Sanderson, that sounds very encouraging indeed! But it's not so easy to 'claim the blessing,'" and she sighed.

They talked of other things. Belinda's manner had denied any familiarity on Sanderson's part had he been inclined to assume such an air. But she was kind.

Nor did her manner change appreciably toward him during the bright days that followed. She met his advances toward warmer friendship with a reserve that he could only accept as final.

Although Doctor Herschall was not on board the ship, Sanderson feared that there was an understanding between the black-browed surgeon and Belinda Melnotte.

He met Aunt Roberta in a day or two, and the little Frenchwoman—who wore just as decisive an air and carried herself with as much sang-froid afloat as ashore—showed that she liked the young man. She approved of his purpose in crossing the Atlantic too.

"Ma foi! you are the only Américain I have met that I could marry, M. Sanderson," she said gaily. "You appreciate la belle France."

But she amended this statement when Belinda introduced Captain Raphael Dexter into the little group.

"But yes, he is a fine man," she confided to her niece. "Did you ever see such a be-au-tiful head of hair? And his eyes—so keen; they twinkle like boulevard lights on a winter night. My faith! he is a fine man."

"Oh, Aunt Roberta! I have never heard you rave over a man before. You make me anxious. Remember I need a chaperon for a while yet."

But Aunt Roberta was quite in earnest.

"Perhaps these Américains improve as they mellow. And how brave of him! He is an old war horse."

"A sea-horse, you mean," laughed Belinda. "He is a dear old man, I agree. But remember, Aunt Roberta, he has three daughters. They might object very vigorously to the captain's assuming new marital duties at his age."

Aunt Roberta laughed gaily.

"Does he not say they are all three pacifists? They surely then cannot be militant. Ma foi! Non!"

The Belle o' Perth plowed as gaily through the sea as though no submarine menace was known. The wireless crackled a staccato warning now and then. Twice the ship's course was changed suddenly, but the officers made no public explanation.

Anxiety, however, set the officers' features in grim lines. There was a tenseness in their manner—a strained air like that of men waiting for a threatened catastrophe. Once the ship was convoyed all day and night by a great, gray-hulled cruiser that signaled back and forth to the liner, but flew only a small ensign at her peak.

It was hard to arouse any spirit of gaiety among the passengers. They partook of the expectant manner of the ship's officers. Many of them spent most of their waking hours sweeping the sea with opera glasses and binoculars. There was a reluctance to go to bed at night; yet the first cabin was not a cheerful place in which to spend the evening. No ship ever had a keener lookout than this, for passengers as well as crew were continually on the watch. Just what they were looking for, however, few could have told.

"They used to have pools on shipboard on the day's run, I remember, and on how many whales we'd spot, and the like," observed Sanderson. "I wonder how it would do to make a pool on whether or not we sight a submarine."

In a group by the rail on this supposedly next-to-the-last day of the voyage, were standing Belinda and her aunt, Captain Dexter and the aviator. The captain seldom troubled to use a glass.

"There's nothing the matter with my eyes," he often said, "if the rheumatism does ketch me in my game leg now and then.

"There's something adrift yonder," he observed, pointing. "Stickin' out of the water. Looks like a spar."

Sanderson, with his glasses to his eyes, wheeled till he got the direction of the captain's pointing finger.

"I see it. No spar, Captain," he said swiftly. He glanced up at the first officer on the quarter-deck. "Mr. Orcutt!"

"Aye, aye!" replied the officer, coming to the rail.

"They've spotted us," the aviator said, his voice unshaken. "See yonder?"

His own glasses found the object again. Captain Dexter uttered a startled expletive. Aunt Roberta grasped Belinda's arm. The latter asked:

"Surely, it isn't a submarine, Mr. Sanderson?"

"That is a periscope. I've seen one before!" cried Sanderson, his eyes glued to his glasses. "Yes, she is approaching! She'll be near enough, if we follow our present course, to launch a torpedo in five minutes!"

CHAPTER VII

THE MONSTER

The first officer of the Belle o' Perth had already signaled for the captain. The latter came running, and a wave of excitement spread through the ship.

The passengers on deck crowded to the rail at which Belinda Melnotte and her party were already standing. There was no outcry, and the crew went about their duties, but like magic an armed officer appeared beside each boat, while the wireless began to crackle overhead.

Bell-signals rang back and forth between the quarter-deck and the engine room. One man appeared on deck with a life preserver strapped under his arms. At that, a woman shrieked and was borne below, sobbing. But there was no panic.

Indeed, a solemn silence seemed to brood over the ship and her company. The revolutions of the screws had been immediately increased. The ship was plowing through the sea swiftly; but the wavering, pipe-like periscope was coming up on a slant. Although the submarine was not speedy enough to cross the steamship's bows, she would soon be able to strike.

Aunt Roberta sank into a chair and put her hands over her eyes; but she made no murmur or complaint. Belinda and Sanderson stood together at the rail. Captain Dexter had suddenly departed.

The girl swept the arc of the horizon as far as she could see with her gaze. Ahead and to the eastward lay a fogbank. She wondered if the officers on the steamship's quarter-deck saw this. She placed a tentative hand upon Frank Sanderson's arm.

"See!" she whispered, pointing.

He turned the glasses forward and nodded. Then he suddenly dropped them and gazed directly into her excited face.

"Why," he murmured, "you are not frightened, Miss Melnotte."

"I—I do not know whether I am or not," she confessed. "But if that awful boat reaches us——"

"She is going to be within gunfire in a minute," he declared. "We are trying to escape. That constitutes a crime in the eyes of the Teuton. She will send us a shell, at least."

"Perhaps she will not hit us."

"You have a poorer opinion of German efficiency than I have," he returned dryly. "I am glad it has come in the daytime. If you have valuables in your stateroom—you and your aunt—you had better secure them."

"Oh!"

"We may be in the boats in ten minutes."

She still clung to his arm, looking deep into his eyes as he spoke. There was something in their steady fire that thrilled her. She knew she gazed into the eyes of a man who was perfectly fearless of spirit.

"'The look of eagles,'" was her unspoken thought.

"Do you hear me, Miss Melnotte—Belinda?"

She started and the color swept into her throat and face. His tender tone could not be mistaken. His desire to aid and sustain her savored of a thought she had determined to shut away from her mind and heart.

And yet, in this intimate moment, with death advancing upon them, was it wrong to show him a little, just a breath, of her real concern? Her hand slipped down his coatsleeve with a caressing gesture and lay for a moment trembling in his own. Frank Sanderson thought, as his hand closed over it, that it was like the body of a bird fallen from its nest that he had once picked up by the roadside. He could feel her fluttering heartbeats in the pulse of it.

They continued to gaze into each other's eyes for a long moment.

Above on the quarter-deck rose the sharp voice of Captain Raphael Dexter.

"Isn't no different, as I can see, from bein' chased by a mad whale. And that's happened to me twice. A whale can only hit head on, and yonder dogfish can only shoot straight ahead. Am I right?"

"Quite true, Captain Dexter," quietly agreed the ship's commander, recognizing the old shipmaster's wisdom and experience.

"Then run your ship zigzag," pronounced the Yankee skipper. "Run for the fog yonder, but keep a-changin' your course—that's the caper!" he added as the captain telegraphed the change to the wheel-house.

The ship bore off suddenly. Instantly a shrieking shell rose from the submarine, which was now awash, and, describing a parabola, dropped just beyond the steamship's stern.

It was an unmistakable command to "Stop!"

A murmur rose from the watching passengers along the rail. Groups of the crew had gathered on the lower deck to view the submarine. There were a number of the stokers off duty. Suddenly, from their midst, rang out a startling, terrifying appeal:

"She'll sink us! Stop the ship!"

The eager, blazing face of Captain Raphael Dexter appeared at the break of the quarter-deck. Forgetting he was not on his own ship, he bellowed:

"Shut that man's mouth! Gag the poor fool! What are we—men or mice?"

"We're men—that's what we are, Skipper!" shouted Frank Sanderson, suddenly grinning up into the face of the old shipmaster.

An appreciative, if uncertain, laugh was raised among the passengers and crew within hearing. The commander of the Belle o' Perth had now taken a confident stand. Captain Dexter apologized for his display of excitement and retreated from the quarter-deck, where fraternal courtesy only had allowed him.

A second shell from the submarine exploded within half a cable's length. The great ship swerved sharply, the sea boiling under her bows. She swung in a great arc and it looked as though she would end by being driven directly upon the U-boat.

The commander of the undersea craft evidently thought this was the intention. Although the submarine was not then in a perfect position for such an attempt, a torpedo was launched—an act not at all unpermissible, as the craft attacked refused to halt.

Belinda Melnotte and Frank Sanderson, now hanging over the rail, saw the white streak of the torpedo in the sea. Other passengers had run below to secure their valuables and to put on life preservers. But the Red Cross recruit had refused to go; and Aunt Roberta was a fatalist.

Belinda realized that the aviator again held her hand. She did not seek to withdraw it. Their mutual gaze was fixed on the deadly missile shot from the torpedo tube of the U-boat. Another moment——

Tendrils of fog were wafted across Belinda's cheek. She glanced around, startled. The high bows of the Belle o' Perth were already parting the fogbank. That was why the commander had shifted his helm so quickly.

The great steamship swept grandly past the ugly undersea boat. The fog closed softly about the Belle o' Perth and hid her. The ship's course was changed for a third time and at once she was out of the zone of danger. The less speedy submarine could neither overtake her before she entered the fog, nor discover the liner once the mist had closed about her.

But something had happened in these minutes of anxiety to both Belinda and Frank Sanderson. They turned, when the ugly craft was out of sight, to look once more into each other's countenances.

The nurse remembered suddenly about that other woman and "the kiddies." Sanderson thought of his brother's warning: "A man in your position has no business to try to tie up any woman's affections."

He released her hand and the lowered lashes hid from him the light that shone in Belinda's eyes.

"Mon Dieu!" said Aunt Roberta, aroused from her stupor, "if once we arrive in that so dear France, never will I step foot upon the sea again—non!"

"Pshaw!" interjected Captain Dexter, rejoining, them at this moment. "You mustn't mind a little thing like a submarine. Anyway, when the war is over, the sea will be perfectly safe."

"Merci, Monsieur!" gasped Aunt Roberta. "Can the dreadful ocean be ever safe?"

"Why not?" demanded Captain Dexter stoutly. "Jack was probably right when he said in a living gale: 'God help the poor folks ashore to-night!' On shipboard you don't have to worry about chimney bricks or roof tiles blowin' off in a bit of a gale and knockin' you down. There's lots of accidents that happen ashore that couldn't possibly ketch you on board ship."

"Like being run down by an automobile," chuckled Sanderson.

"Or fallin' out of one of your pesky airships," retorted the Yankee shipmaster. "By Hannah! I've sailed the seas for sixty years—and look at me. Ain't never been killed yet."

"Ah, le capitaine," murmured the little Frenchwoman, "is so brave! But poor weak womankind must tremble at such awful events as this that has just happened. Ah! those terrible Germans! They are sea-tigers!"

"I'd liked to have had the management of this ship for ten minutes," grumbled the Yankee shipmaster. "I believe I could have run that dogfish under. At any rate I'd have tried to."

"Oh, Captain Dexter!" ejaculated Belinda, in horror. "You would have sunk her with all her crew?"

"Well, I don't see how I could have saved 'em," responded the captain, with some disgust. "They'd have sunk us quick enough."

"But you say yourself they are only obeying orders!" she exclaimed spiritedly.

"Ha! And I'm afraid my hand would have obeyed the orders of my brain without much compunction," concluded the captain grimly.

The incident colored the entire voyage in the memory of all. Belinda's remembrance of it was bound to be a painful one.

This was not alone because of the submarine chase. Continually in her thought was the vision of the way Frank Sanderson had looked at her—the little he had said—the pressure of his hand.

Had she given him further opportunity, would he have spoken the word that was the master key to her heart?

She trembled at the thought. Yet, there was that other woman—the kiddies——

She half hated him! She wholly loved him! They landed, and she and Aunt Roberta journeyed slowly to Paris without Sanderson's having been given the opportunity to speak again to Belinda in private.

CHAPTER VIII

"POUR LA PATRIE"

When Aunt Roberta stepped foot on French soil it was to be expected that all things would begin to go well with her.

The port with its crowded docks, bulging store-houses, trains of wounded English going home, platoons of prisoners likewise boarding the transports for the concentration camps in England—"Ah! the terrible Boches!" shuddered Aunt Roberta when she saw these—the baggage lorries piled high with Red Cross supplies, ambulances coming down to the docks with the "grands blessés" immovable on their backs, the troops of "walking wounded"—all these sights and sounds affected the volatile little Frenchwoman strangely.

"Ah! non! non! This is not France—not my France!" she wailed. "Let us go on to Paris—and quickly."

But to go to Paris quickly in these days of the great war one must possess the influence of a marshal of France. It was a jest aboard the train: "Even les Boches could not get to Paris!"

And the train itself! "Ma foi!" was Aunt Roberta's disgusted cry, "it is a cattle train—no better! It should be seen to."

"If you were English you would write to the Times about it," laughed Belinda. She had made up her mind to suffer discomforts of all kinds when she enlisted for service in the Red Cross, and she would not lose her cheerfulness thus early in the game.

Paris was reached at last. Aunt Roberta saw little change in the gay city. There were flowers at the street corners, and flags and trophies fluttered everywhere. It chanced to be the occasion of the visit of some important men in the councils of the Allies, and the French authorities know well the value of flowers and flags, bands and gay uniforms, to cheer the hearts of a patriotic people.

This modern struggle lacks many of the elements of the old-fashioned "pomp of war"; yet there must be some display in the French capital. Else Paris would not be Paris.

They went to a rather musty hotel, Belinda and her aunt, for a day or two while they looked for an apartment. For Aunt Roberta was to remain in Paris, and her niece would want a home to go to when she was able to have a home. One could not walk right into even a base hospital, put on one's cap and apron, and go to work. There is more red tape than that about it.

"Ah, well, the poor hotel—it is war time," sighed Aunt Roberta, trying to excuse the discomforts of the place.

But when they began their search for an apartment they soon made a discovery of moment. The gay life of the city, so attractive to the American visitor, might be at low ebb; nevertheless there were many Americans, as well as other foreigners, living in Paris. Visitors benevolent; families of those Americans serving at the front, and there were at this time nearly twenty-five thousand from the United States serving France in one capacity or another; people driven out of the actual zone of warfare and able to live in the capital. And all, it seemed, were living in furnished apartments.

They looked and looked for two foot-wearying, brain-fagging days. Always Aunt Roberta's house-wifely soul was seared by some lack in the arrangement of those rooms they saw, or she was horrified by the slovenliness of the halls, or she suspected vermin.

"Enough!" cried Belinda, at last, and with energy. "We cannot refuse to lease an apartment because you do not like the cut of the concierge's nightcap. Time is being lost. I must get to work; but I must see you settled first."

"But my dear Belinda!" wailed the good woman. "The bath in that last place was—was archaic!"

"If you wished a modern bath in a thirty-dollar apartment you should have remained in America," declared her niece, and that was almost as "catty" a retort as she was capable of making.

Aunt Roberta had already been subdued by discouragement. The next morning they took the very first place that offered. It was on a good street, but the building, or "hotel," itself presented an air of shabby gentility that should have warned them both that it had long since harbored more guests than rent-paying ones.

The concierge was a dried, little, apple-cheeked man—too old for service in the army; a hungry-looking little man who was so eager for small change that he bewailed to them on first acquaintance this disability that kept him from earning a sou a day as a soldier of France.

"I am deprived of my rights by age, Mademoiselle," he said to Belinda—"the affliction of years. Yet am I not spry and active?"

"If he is," complained Aunt Roberta in private, "why does he not scrub these steps?"

The wanderers signed for the apartment, however, and moved in at once. It was on the Rue de Rivoli, among more modern apartment houses and mansions; but it was set back from the street, with a high iron fence and a very ornate gateway and grill in front of it. The courtyard was flagged, with a dry fountain on either hand as one walked to the house. A handful of dry stalks in the narrow strips of baked earth that had been garden-beds told of the summer's drought. The flowers were no more.

Dust rose from the rugs as they walked through the rooms, and Aunt Roberta sneezed.

"Gesundheit!" her niece wished absently.

"Don't! Don't dare speak that heathen tongue here!" cried Aunt Roberta in horror. "Do you wish us both to be arrested as spies?"

Then she opened her trunk, found one of her starchy print dresses, put it on, and commenced to clean. Although dinner was brought in from a restaurant, Aunt Roberta had not finished cleaning by bedtime.

"And those beds! Have they never heard of iron beds, and proper springs, and a sanitary mattress?" burst forth the good woman at last. "Ah! those canopies—reeking of the First Empire, I am con-fi-dent! The heaps of dust and debris in the closets! The pots and pans, smoky and greasy on the outside, and burned within! That concierge—le sale cultivateur!—no more fit for his tasks than one of the pigs he was wont to drive before he migrated to Paris!"

"But this is Paris," Belinda ventured to remind her.

"Not the Paris of my memory," Aunt Roberta grumbled. She was beginning to realize the change.

That was a memorable night for both.

"This is truly 'embattled France,'" cried Belinda, finally driven from between the sheets of her bed by the enemy horde; and she spent the remainder of the night lying in her robe on top of the bedclothes, which she first carefully tucked in all around so as to confine the warring insects to their trenches.

Aunt Roberta was in despair. She had spent the night, it was proved, sitting upright in a chair.

"Ma foi! I send that gray-headed janitor at once for a gallon of petrol. I will myself saturate the beds. And down come those canopies!"

It was noticeable that Aunt Roberta, of her own volition, began again to use English quite as much as she had in New York. Indeed, before the day was over, Belinda heard her decrying the stupidity of the concierge because he did not understand certain American phrases that she had picked up in the United States.

Belinda went to the Comité des Secours Américains that morning, and registered. It occupied a spacious, elegant suite, its windows looking toward the Seine. Its air was that of a busy American corporation office, with a bevy of stenographers and typists at work, all with wonderfully dressed hair and some with the latest model of "skimpy" skirts. Even in war time these Paris-dressed girls made one feel the inferiority of fashions in any other part of the globe.

She had desired from the beginning to be an actual aid in the work of the Red Cross for France. Not in the American division, nor yet in the work for the British soldiers. She learned that an examination was soon to be held for nurses' diplomas in the French Red Cross.

Fresh from her work in the New York hospital, she felt that this was her chance. She armed herself with Red Cross textbooks in both French and English and went home to study with confidence. To Aunt Roberta's housecleaning complaints she waved a careless hand.

"I have to study," she said. "Show me a clean corner where I can camp."

"There is no such place," sniffed Aunt Roberta. "But you may as well sit here in the dining-room and I will clean up to and around you. Mon Dieu! what a house!"

Belinda studied night and day until the very hour of the examination. Then she faced nine doctors in an oral inquest. They were polite indeed to la fille Américaine; but they were very exacting. The examination lasted two hours, and she passed with credit.

She entered the service. Actually she was a member of the French military force. She was something more than a mere volunteer Red Cross nurse. Soon she would be sent to a military hospital directly behind the fighting line.

Belinda came away from her session with the examining doctors in a spirit of buoyancy. She had accomplished something worth while, proving to herself as well as to the examination board that she had in her an ability above the ordinary. She very well knew that some of the American women who had offered themselves for the work—and with the very best intentions—had proved to be failures.

As she came down the steps of the Bureau her eyes were bright and her face glowed, flowerlike. Or so thought the young man in the gray outing suit and with the wide American straw hat to shade his freckled face, who chanced just then to be swinging down the avenue.

"Miss Melnotte!"

"Oh, Mr. Sanderson! So you have reached Paris," she said demurely.

"Well put. Came pretty near not getting here at all. You and your aunt had it pretty soft, getting those reservations—believe me. My! you look fine."

"Don't make me blush, Mr. Sanderson," she begged, smiling. Who could help smiling when this boyish young man was looking with such open admiration into one's face? "And this is such a public place," she added.

"Say," he said, seizing an opening that Belinda had no intention of giving him, "it is public here! And warm, too! There's one of the jolliest little cafés yonder. I used to patronize it when I was over here before. They serve a cold and temperate drink almost as good as you can get in New York."

"You tempt me," confessed Belinda frankly.

When she had left this young man at the rail of the Belle o' Perth it was with the intention of being coolly polite to him—that was all—if they met again. But it was thirst (she had answered questions for two hours, remember!) that led to her impulsive yielding.

She determined to give Frank Sanderson no opportunity for an extended tête-à-tête. But her recent success made her desire a confidant of her own kind and age. In a minute she was volubly telling the young man all about it.

"Bully!" said Frank, leading her to a seat in the shaded garden. "My congratulations."

They ordered. On opposite sides of the little, round iron table, was it strange if they became a bit intimate? Little as Belinda had intended, she could not help warming toward one so enthusiastic over her proposed work.

"It's fine! It's splendid of you, Miss Melnotte!" he cried. "And an officer of the French army—no less!" He saluted, with laughter. "Why, the best I can look for at first is a non-com's stripes. I believe they make 'em corporals when they have passed first flying examinations."

"But you are a professional aviator already."

"In America. Not here. The Frenchies go at the game—especially in the army—in a different way." He told her swiftly of his hopes and aspirations. "I feel, too," he added, "that I need the practice. I'm going to enlist and enter one of the aviation schools if possible—and at once."

"I hope you will have every success, Mr. Sanderson," she said, suddenly recovering her usual poise and rising to give him her hand.

He held it a moment longer than necessary.

"Miss Melnotte," he cried hastily and under his breath, "my wishes for your safety and happiness are of the warmest. I cannot express myself as I should like to—I have no right to express myself—now. But if the time ever comes——"

The girl drew away her hand. The perplexed expression that came into her eyes—eyes the moment before so bright and tender in their glance—would have closed his lips had her words not done so.

"Mr. Sanderson," she said brusquely, "aren't you forgetting yourself? Good-by—and good luck."

He had no idea that as Belinda Melnotte passed on so swiftly—a delightful bit of color to his eyes in the sun-drenched street—she pulled close her veil across her face to hide the tears. Suddenly the world seemed a sad place to her again. All the exhilaration of her success before the examination board was gone.

She went home to Aunt Roberta in a very serious frame of mind and mentioned only casually her meeting with Frank Sanderson.

The next few days were such busy ones for Belinda that she had little time for moping. She had entered upon a career that promised to fill both her mind and heart.

She had gained at least six months in advancement by joining the French Red Cross and earning a commission. Otherwise she would have been obliged to serve a term at a base hospital. Now, in two days, she was ordered away. Just where she was going she did not know. It was "somewhere in France."

Aunt Roberta wept a little over her when she learned her niece was really going. But she soon dried her eyes and went back to her everlasting cleaning of the apartment. The little woman would never be satisfied until she had these rooms in the gloomy old hotel as spick and span as the ones she had left in New York. Besides, work takes one's mind off one's afflictions.

CHAPTER IX

FIRST EXPERIENCES

The train rolled on staggeringly. Berth cars had long since been removed from all military trains as being too cumbersome. The exigencies of the situation demanded that comfort and luxuries be sacrificed to a desire to move men—many men—quickly. The gay but strangely practical French more quickly adjusted themselves to the intensely serious fact that the party which endured most was destined to win the war.

It was a strictly military train on which Belinda Melnotte traveled. She was an atom in the Military Department of the French Republic; so why should she not be jounced about on a hard seat as well as the soldiers traveling to the trenches? She was to halt short of the trenches; just how short she did not know.

Her uniform was quite as distinctive as that of the soldiers themselves. Nor could the cross on her cap and breast be mistaken. These marks of her service won the girl a good deal of attention.

She had, during her stay in Paris, become used to hearing little but French spoken. Speaking it so perfectly herself, she did not think she minded the lack of the sound of English. Yet suddenly, while the train stood for some time and for some mysterious reason at a little station, she heard through the open window a high-pitched voice singing a popular music hall ditty—and it sounded good!

"Yet I suppose he is intoxicated. He seems to be," she said to a man in uniform with the empty coatsleeve, who had strolled along the platform to speak to her with the camaraderie which it seemed was quite customary.

"But no, Mademoiselle. He is one Anglais blessé—a grand blessé. In an ambulance behind there," with a characteristic shrug of the shoulder indicating the direction. "They wait for the train sanitaire. He is one of these air pilots, it is said, and fell with his Nieuport—such a young man! And with red hair," added the one-armed poilu, as though the last fact made it all the more sad.

This information startled Belinda. She jumped up from her seat and rushed to the door, which stood open, for the soldiers returning from furlough who occupied the compartment with her had all stepped out.

"Where is he?" she demanded of the one-armed man. "Show him to me," she added as she leaped to the platform.

"But even you can do nothing for him, Mademoiselle," he said flatteringly. "He is delirious. They have removed both his legs. The ambulancier states that he cannot live."

Of course, it was foolish of her. Frank Sanderson could not possibly have joined the Aviation Corps, been assigned to this sector, and fallen with his airplane all in a few days' time! Yet the suggestion made her run around behind the station to where the now weakening voice of the singer still chanted the foolish song in English.

One look at the white face on the stretcher reassured her. But, oh, he was so young! And his eyes burned so brightly! He thought in his delirium that he knew her and he smiled and tried to reach forth his hand to her.

"Hi, there, Flossy! Was it you singin' that jolly bit? My word! but you're a long way from home."

"She doesn't understand you, old scout," said the American ambulance driver. "She's French like the rest of 'em."

"Oh, can nothing be done for him?" gasped Belinda.

The ambulance driver came quickly to attention, blushing like the great boy he was. "Beg pardon, Miss. You look French, you know."

The injured aviator was laughing immoderately, if weakly. "What d'you think of this Johnny, Floss? Callin' you a French girl. Ah!" he added in quite another tone, "they were a long while gettin' these legs of mine off—don't you think? They held a sheet up between me and my legs when they first tried to do it: but I knew when they cut into me—the butchers! The blood spurted up and spread all over the sheet, so it did!"

"Local anesthetic," whispered the ambulance driver to the white-faced nurse. "Couldn't etherize him. And it's all for nothing, I fancy. Might as well have let the poor chap be buried whole as in pieces."

The locomotive whistled a warning. There was really nothing she could do for the sufferer. Belinda fled back to the train and it moved on. She had glimpsed a little of what her work was to be—and the poilus in her compartment respected her tears.

But they tried to cheer her up immediately. If a woman's tears appeal to men of all nations and in all walks in life, they particularly appeal to a Frenchman. A big, bewhiskered lieutenant sat down beside her and talked to her as though she were a child he was comforting.

"Non! Non! Do not take on so, Mademoiselle. Let the tears be for us chaps who are hit. Then we weep—not our nurses. We must look to you for cheerfulness—for courage. Mon Dieu! this fighting would be a hard task indeed were it not for you of the Croix Rouge."

Another man had picked a bunch of wild flowers while the train was halted (who but a Frenchman could have made so artistic a bouquet of the poor little blossoms?) and he presented them to Belinda with a polite speech. An apple-cheeked boy slipped into the seat beside her after her bewhiskered comforter was gone and blushingly showed her the photograph of the girl he had just been home to marry. Naturally the nurse had to be interested in that romance.

And so, soon, the train stopped again and there was a cow-shed in sight where clean, mild-eyed cows were standing to be milked. Belinda ventured forth again to beg a cup of the fresh milk. The women milking would not let her pay for it, and when they learned she had come from America they showered her with blessings.

"These good people seem so grateful for the little America is doing for their country," she later wrote in her diary.

There were children, too—bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked little ones in blue smocks and sabots. They clung to her skirt, and the older ones asked her questions about America—especially about New York, which they had heard much of.

Louis, or Alphonse, or Henri had been to New York before the war and had told them unbelievable things. They were now in the trenches, having returned from their work in New York to fight for la patrie. Was it true that there were buildings in New York higher than the Eiffel Tower?

Then the train rolled on again. It drew on toward night. Once they slowly passed a long train sanitaire. The chorused, if low, groans from the wounded was a wail as from souls imprisoned in purgatory.

Belinda steeled herself against displaying the feelings of horror these sounds called up. She talked cheerfully with the returning poilus. Another nurse—one with experience in the field hospitals—joined her and this girl's chatter was very helpful to the recruit.

"Of course, there really are no field hospitals in this war. Where those big guns throw their iron fourteen, sometimes sixteen, kilometres, a hospital in the field would have small chance of escaping bombardment, to say nothing of attack from tauben that have little respect for the Red Cross flag," she said bitterly.

"The first dressing of wounds—if the victim cannot walk—is done right in the trenches by the first-aid men. Rude enough the dressing is sometimes; but many lives are saved by the work. In the hospital you will go to, you'll be within sound of the guns all right. Don't worry about that. And it'll be very different from the hospitals you've been used to, no matter how much experience you've had at home. My faith, yes!

"They have settled on the huts as the best of all for this work—a nurse to a hut and from twenty-four to three dozen patients for her to attend. Work? I believe you!"

It was midnight when the Red Cross recruit arrived at the end of her railway journey. She was to report here to an official who would tell her how to reach her assignment. But the morning must do for that.

Belinda got a room above a wineshop on the main street of the town, and was made comfortable by the shopkeeper's wife. It seemed strange to her to be going about so absolutely alone and unattended. Yet she felt no fear. These people—everybody she met—were so kindly disposed that one could not feel otherwise than confident of perfect safety.

At least, no anxiety kept Belinda Melnotte awake after her tiring journey from Paris. The clatter of wagons and the braying of mules awoke her with the rising sun. A baggage train was going through the central street of the town, and there was no sleep for the nurse after that.

The housewife served her coffee and a roll with which to break her fast, being likewise glad to talk to the mademoiselle who had come so far to nurse the poor poilus. Her husband—"mon brave"—the woman declared, was fighting somewhere for France—she knew not where.

"He has promised me not to get killed," she said cheerfully. "Of course I would not have him an embusqué—no Frenchman may show the white feather at this time. But some of these men are so reckless! They think more of a smoke than they do of their lives—and we poor women at home suffering agonies of fear for them! Ça y est! That is what we are here for, n'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?"

As early as possible the nurse sought an interview with the major. He was a big, hairy man, with twinkling blue eyes behind his eye-glasses. He was young, but very decisive.

"You are very welcome, Mademoiselle," he said in English, although Belinda had addressed him in his own tongue. "Do you speak German, too?"

"I am part German and part French by ancestry," she told him. "I speak both languages."

"But you are American born," he responded with satisfaction. "That is a saving grace—at this time," and he smiled. "I know your hospital in New York. Is Doctor Herschall still on its staff?"

"Yes."

"His name is known, Mademoiselle. Many of these German surgeons are quite wonderful fellows—masters in their art. But it has been remarked—and wondered at—that Herschall has not returned to his own country. He is in sympathy with his people, is he not?"

"I know very little about the Herr Doktor's opinions," said Belinda cautiously. "From some of his speeches, however, I should think him quite favorably disposed toward his Government. Prussians generally are, I believe."

The French surgeon nodded. "Now for you, Mademoiselle," he said. "With your evident knowledge and experience you will be very helpful in the place I shall send you to. 'Let nothing you dismay,' as the English marriage service puts it. As you Americans say, 'Tackle any job.' Remember that in all probability there will be nobody near who knows any more than you do, or who can do the task any better."

With this he sent her away in an empty ambulance that was returning to a small village up near the battle front, and beyond. The growl and rattle of the big guns had been a disturbing factor to Belinda's hearing since soon after sunrise. The driver of the ambulance, however, said they were very distant. There was no fighting on the immediate front at present.

This ambulancier was nothing but a boy. He had finished his freshman course at Columbia and had insisted on coming over to serve France in the Red Cross. Like Belinda, he was "half French."

"Mom and the girls are in Paris. They're knitting socks and winding bandages for the Red Cross. Dad stays at home and makes dollars for us all. Poor dad! he has the hardest job—and serves France more perfectly than any of us!"

Belinda began to realize after listening to him that driving a cheaply built American ambulance behind the battleline was no sinecure.

"The British chaps call these motor-cars 'mechanical fleas.' But they do the work—and as a usual thing it takes a shell to really put 'em out of commission. We drivers learn how to repair them—even if we break down on the road. The British Johnnies can laugh; but France should strike that Detroit manufacturer a special medal-of-honor.

"I carry in my tool and repair kit almost everything but a new chassis," the boy added, laughing. "That's since I broke down once coming along from the front with two blessés on the stretchers. Seemed to me at the time the old girl busted in half a dozen places at once.

"I'd have made the hospital on three cylinders at that, only for a steep hill. Twice the old car all but got to the top only to die, coughing, and slide clear back to the bottom. My two blessés were pretty well shattered below their waists; but they were good sports. They were laying bets with each other as to whether I'd pull 'em over the hill before a Boche shell got 'em."

"But you did save them?" Belinda asked.

"One of 'em," said the boy soberly. "I had to walk twelve kilometres for help. While I was gone one of the wounded chaps died. He had taken the short end of the bet and he paid the other chap just before he went off. Good sports, those poilus, after all."

Belinda listened—and looked. Not many physical and visible signs of war along this road. It was a warm morning; the dust rose behind them in a stifling cloud, but ahead the driveway and the fields were clear. Why! there were neatly staked vineyards, blooming gardens, vegetable fields—all the signs of farm industry.

But here, beside the road, was an excavation. Had somebody started to dig a cellar—or a well—and abandoned it unfinished? It was right at the roadside.

A little farther on there were several similar holes in a row. The road circled around them through a field that had been plowed. Suddenly the nurse was thrilled by a thought.

"Oh!" she cried, "what are they?"

"Shell holes—craters," replied the ambulance driver. "This section was under fire a week ago."

CHAPTER X

BELINDA AT WORK

The directrice was just as positive and bustling a little Frenchwoman as Aunt Roberta. Belinda was quite sure she must have made an atrocious nurse, even in time of peace; but she possessed great executive ability and was inured to the work by long experience. It was "the job" to her, and "the job" only. If the wounded looked to her for pity rather than justice, they looked in vain.

"Don't let them bully you, these wounded," she instructed Belinda. "They will do it if you do not put your foot down firmly. It's their work to get back to the trenches as soon as possible—or be sent home. It's our job to get them back on the firing line as quickly as it can be done. Remember that."

"Ah!" breathed the queer little man who was infirmier of Salle III to which Belinda was assigned. "Madame la Directrice, her bark is much worse than her bite. Ma foi! one would think to hear her that her hand wore a steel gauntlet instead of being like velvet. Oui! Oui!"

He was a man with a twisted foot and a harelip, named Erard.

He had been born with the harelip, of course; but the twisted foot he had suffered as a boy. A heavy truck had run over it, he told Belinda. He could not, of course, serve in the trenches; but no more patriotic son of France ever lived, it seemed.

"Just now," Erard said, "mademoiselle will find it easy. Only eighteen of the beds are filled. There are thirty-four blessés when the ward is full."

Erard watched at night. He gave the patients their breakfasts; he washed them; he lifted them when the nurse dressed their wounds; he fetched and carried; he had so many duties that Belinda wondered if the little man with the harelip ever slept—if he ever found time to eat.

The blessés in the care of the American recruit were just at the "fussy stage." They were inclined at first to be critical. They resented losing a nurse they had got used to, to have foisted upon them "a greenie." Too, she was an American, it was said, and these wounded poilus had their doubts concerning the good intentions of les Américains.

"Why, they tell me the sales Boches are just as welcome in that America as we French," one said.

During these first few weeks, there were not many new cases brought into Salle III. Just enough to keep the number up to the average of eighteen or twenty. Quite as many were discharged to go back to the trenches, or died, or were sent to the base hospitals as being practically unfit for "gun fodder," as were brought in from the front. Just now there was a lull in this sector. The French and the Germans seemed merely watching each other.

The wise ones said a great battle was in preparation. But it was very monotonous, this waiting. The guns growled and thundered, but in the distance. Belinda was not sure she would have found an occasional shell bursting near by hard to bear.

From the doorway of her hut where she found time occasionally to stand to breathe the pure air Belinda could see the huge captive balloons, wagging lazily back and forth at their tethers. Sometimes a smaller shape darted across the horizon—an aeroplane of some kind—occasionally chased by black bursts of smoke, the shells fired by the German aerial guns.

Somewhere over there, perhaps eight or ten kilometres away, were the trenches. At any time—at first the thought made Belinda very nervous—a battle might break out along this sector. Like leashed dogs the French and the Germans were tugging to get at each other—ready to fly at each other's throats.

The aeroplanes she watched with particular interest. She wondered if Frank Sanderson had as yet joined the Flying Corps. Was he already assigned to work on the battle front? Was he one of those whom the French acclaim the greatest heroes, the pilot of a battleplane? She had heard nothing from him—nor of him—since they had parted at the little Paris café.

That was her own fault and the girl fully realized it. She had dismissed him with an abruptness that must have hurt the aviator if he cared for her at all. And Belinda was positive that he did care.

She could not forget "Stella" and "the kiddies." She told herself stoutly at first that she wished nothing to do with a man such as Frank Sanderson had proved himself to be. Yet her intimacy with the young aviator back in the New York hospital and on board ship had revealed no characteristic of his nature that bore out the suspicions of him which had been bred in her heart and mind.

This was why her thought returned ever and again to the careless, cheerful, smiling American. He would make, she was sure, the very highest type of pilote.

The characteristics that made him what he was seemed to deny the possibility of his playing fast and loose with any woman. Belinda could not understand these contradictions.

In the loneliness of her poor lodging at night these and similar thoughts fastened upon her mind. How she had been interested in him from the very first! When he was brought into the New York hospital—wounded and delirious—Sanderson had appealed to her as no other young man had ever appealed.

Was it because she was now so lonely that she could not scatter these thoughts—that she could not drive his spirit away from her? Was it because she was away from friends and amid strange and trying surroundings that she was so weak? She tried to excuse herself by admitting these reasons for a time; but at length she had to face the thing out.

Belinda Melnotte was no coward. The turmoil in her soul could not go on for long without arousing scorn for herself.

"Why, he is not worthy of my thought," she told herself bitterly. "A married man! A man with wife and children! Oh! I should be ashamed of myself! I who call myself good!

"This certainly cannot be love. He has a fascination for me; just as Doctor Herschall inspires me with disgust—with hate! Am I different from other girls? Is there something wrong with me—something innately bad? I do love him! I do! I do! And I hate myself for it!"

She threw herself upon her bed, muffling her sobs in the pillow. This acknowledgment of what she termed her weakness in caring so deeply for Frank Sanderson seared her very soul. And her agony was the heavier because she had nobody in whom she might confide.

The monotony of her work in the hospital finally deadened her apprehension of the coming battle; but it dulled no other thoughts. Her little round of life was made up of petty duties and interests that were narrowing to both body and mind. She had the same wounds to dress each day; the same physic to administer; the same complaints to hear; the same jokes to listen to—some of them not at all clean; the same faces to see and voices to hear. Oh, yes! her work at the New York hospital had been vastly more interesting, had had more variety.

Yet a war hospital is so much cleaner than a hospital in time of peace. Here there were none of the foul diseases which came under her care while she was a probationer. And there were no old people doddering to their graves, full of the ills that come with advancing years.

"I wish you might see me and my children now, Tante," wrote Belinda to Aunt Roberta. "The ward is spick and span. There is a trophy of flags draped at the head, which all the blessés face. When I had arranged this and hung branches of bright-hued autumn leaves over each window (and bribed two of the orderlies to wash those windows till the panes shone!) my little infirmier of the harelip marched proudly in with a small silk American flag which he had secured from one of the ambulanciers from New York. This he placed up with my arrangement of banners and the whole ward applauded—that is, all those of the poor fellows who possess their full complement of hands and can applaud.

"It made my eyes sting. Not so much because of the Stars and Stripes, perhaps—although to a full-blown American I suppose it is a comforting sight—but at the thought expressed. My queer little infirmier, as well as my wounded, have learned through these weeks to love me.

"If you think the furnished flat on the Rue di Rivoli something of a cross, dear Tante, I wish you could see our makeshifts here. And the room I have to sleep in at the other end of the village—quite fifteen minutes' walk.

"Old Minerva, the aged dame is called with whom I lodge. She remembers '70 of course, and is never through talking about it. Then the Germans marched by twice triumphant—going to Paris and returning.

"'But it is not so this time—the sales embusqués! They strut by quite as grand as before,'—she points south, to Paris—'but they come back on the run! Ça y est, maintenant! Ça y est!' and she smiles a toothless but delighted smile.

"She does well by me, does Minerva. When I have made my toilet by six o'clock (and now it is still pitch dark at that hour) she has ready a huge bowl of coffee, bread and butter, with sometimes a baked apple or some other compote.

"I walk briskly to the hospital. The sentinel at the gate salutes me, for know you, dear Tante, I am a real officer of the French army—I wear the insignia, A. D. F. and a bar, beside my croix rouge. Erard is sure to be brushing out the entrance of Salle III and welcomes me with his crooked smile.

"He has already cleaned up the ward, emptied the slops, cleansed pans, got rid as well as possible of all the more offensive things. He does not slip out at night through the hedge, as some of the other infirmiers and orderlies do, to visit a neighboring estaminet and get drunk. He is a faithful little man, is my Erard.

"I must speak to each of my children first, or they would feel the day had begun wrong. Then I look to see that all things are in order, and start instrument boiling. Ah, that instrument boiling! It is an endless task.

"Taking temperatures and marking charts is the next duty. Face washing and mouth rinsing go with this, and Erard officiates at the combined ceremonies.

"The doctor comes about eight o'clock, and after he goes I am left to my own resources for the rest of the day unless something unexpected happens to some of my patients.

"Dressings follow, and the first to manage are the more important ones. Sometimes I accomplish only three or four of these before the bell rings for soup at a quarter to eleven. At first these major wounds almost keeled me over! The washing of huge shrapnel holes, the putting in of drains, the probing for bits of shell—all the horrible by-bits of work that the surgeons have no time for!

"We nurses have our déjeuner à la fourchette immediately after the patients are fed, crowding into a small detached hut where we eat and gossip as fast as possible. It is the single hour of general relaxation during the day. There is not another American girl here (am I American, I wonder?), but they are all lovely to me.

"Mail arrives immediately after lunch. And those blessés who receive little presents from home—oh, how they are envied by the others! Dear fellows! they almost always pass the goodies around, even though they be but a few cheap candies. And I am obliged to take my share. These gifts I often hide away, however, to slip into some poor fellow's hand before I go at night. It is marvelous what comfort there seems to be for even the most sorely wounded in a peppermint or a lime wafer.

"The remaining dressings follow, and so all the afternoon. Then comes soup for my children—and for myself—after which I give massage to those who need it, prepare soothing drinks for the night, give injections and play 'ma mère' in general to the ward—stuffing cotton under weary backs and plastered limbs; and so bid all good-night. Then I polish my instruments, clean up in general, and am relieved by my harelipped infirmier, who comes stumbling in for another vigil, bravely blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

"Ah, Tante, I shall want to forget all this some day. I wonder if I can!

"You say Captain Dexter has called. If he comes again give him my best love—the dear, brave man! If he is as interested in flying as you say he is, he must know what has become of Mr. Sanderson."

Aunt Roberta wrote frequently and sent on, too, letters which arrived from America. One came from Sue Blaine—a cheerful and newsy missive and one which the Red Cross nurse read over and over again. Especially this portion of it:

"Oh, my darling Belinda! you should have seen Herr Doktor's face when I told him of your departure for France. It seemed he had called at your house and you were gone. He was actually white when I explained your sudden disappearance—I do not know whether with rage or because he feared for your precious life, honey!

"However, it was not long before the Herr Doktor left us himself. He bade nobody good-by, and I learned on good authority that he had secretly slipped out of the States, homeward bound. Many of the warmer supporters of the Kaiser among our New York Germans are doing so. And, of course, Doctor Herschall would be of infinite help to the Prussian Hospital Staff.

"The trenches will, I presume, separate you and him, if the Herr Doktor succeeds in reaching Germany. At least, you will not have to serve under his direction in your hospital work. Now isn't that a blessing, Belinda?"

Not that this news of Doctor Herschall's departure, presumably for the battlefields, should have been of any moment to the Red Cross nurse. Yet she admitted the fact that he had a certain influence upon her and that this had not been dwarfed by separation from him.

"This war will make him famous I am sure," she told herself. "Those wonderful hands of his will perform operations that other medical men will acclaim as scientific marvels. But the unfortunates whom he operates upon—will it be worth while? Will it be really a Christian act to drag them back from the grave to spend torturing years as cripples and half-men?"

The lull between battles was not to last for long after this letter was received from America. Despite the prophecies that there would be no push until spring, and in spite, indeed, of the pouring October rains, one night at midnight the near-by guns broke out and shook Belinda in her bed.

She got up and dressed. There was no possibility of sleep for her, for neither her ears nor her nerves were attuned to this thunderous music. Belinda went to the window, opened the creaking shutter, and leaned across the sill. She could feel the tremor of the house after the report of each gun.

Toward the north, where she knew the trenches lay, a red flash abruptly illuminated the starless sky. A roar like the blowing up of a gas-tank followed in train of the flash. It was one of the huge German guns.

The artillery battle soon became general. The horizon was lit with flames. The air crashed about her ears. She was so deafened that she did not at first hear the noise of the troop of ambulances getting under way for the front.

They swept under her window, their shapes but dimly outlined, for they carried no lights. A lamp moving along the road—especially an automobile lamp—was an object easily spied from a directing taube or a captive balloon; and a shell was likely to drop upon the bright mark within a few moments.

Belinda put on her long blue cape, pulled up the hood, and went out. Minerva and the other lodgers remained in bed. They had suffered other bombardments.

The nurse needed nobody to tell her that those dark cars rolling off to the north, finding their way over the broken roads by the light of the illuminating bombs thrown up from the trenches, or by the flash of the shells, would begin soon to return laden with wounded. She must be "on the job," as Madame la Directrice was so fond of saying.

Suddenly the searchlights began to play more rapidly above the trenches. High up in the gloom they revealed certain drifting shapes against which the anti-aircraft guns were turned—a squadron of bombarding machines returning from a raid behind the German lines.

She watched these vague forms as the moving lights searched them out. Then the shrapnel began to burst about them.

They came on slowly, as though tired after their long journey into the enemy's country. She hoped they would soon be safely across the battleline.

Suddenly, like a new star in the murky firmament, a red flame appeared. Belinda watched it with terrified gaze, for she knew instinctively what it was.

In the midst of the squadron of bombarding aeroplanes this light had sprung up. It spread rapidly—and began to fall.

One had been set afire! This thought only for an instant preceded another in the girl's mind: Suppose Frank Sanderson was in that burning machine!

Faster and faster the flaming aeroplane plunged toward the earth, trailing behind it a tail of sparks like the tail of a comet.

The shells ceased bursting high in the air. The glow of the fallen aeroplane was swallowed up in the flashes of the trench guns. The squadron had passed behind the French battleline.

But somewhere on that No-Man's-Land between the trenches, the wreck of the bombarding machine and the aviators who accompanied it were being devoured by the flames.

The girl hurried along the road, shuddering and fearful. When she arrived at the hospital there was an air of excitement and expectancy that she had never seen there before. It was communicated to the restless patients in her ward. The little wooden hut shook and rattled to the roar of the guns.

"A great day has begun, Mademoiselle," chirped the harelipped Erard, bustling about, doing unnecessary things, setting the whole ward "by the ears," until Marius swore at him.

"Dirty little rabbit-mouth!" declared the irritable blessé. "He will never learn. And with that broken foot dragging, dragging, like a child's toy cart. Mon Dieu! What a useless beggar!"

"Hush, Marius," the girl said. "Poor Erard is very kind to me."

"Sale embusqué! Why is he not kind to me?" growled Marius.

It was scarcely light—gray dawn of a cloudy fall day—when the ambulances began to trundle in at the gateway of the hospital enclosure with their burdens of wounded.

Belinda was called to the operating ward to help. Piles of clothing lay here and there on the floor—filthy, muddy, blood-soaked; torn or cut from the broken bodies on the beds. The brancardiers stepped on these heaps, or kicked them aside, as they lifted the stripped wounded, one by one, to the brown canvas stretchers, and carried them, walking carefully out of step, to the operating room.

That operating room! Belinda had a vision for a moment of the spotless, sterilized compartment at the New York hospital, with Doctor Herschall in mask, apron and white apparel, waiting at the table for a single case to be brought to him, putting his wonderful hands and fingers through an exercise like a pianist's gymnastics, to make them supple.

Then the girl was suddenly so busy that she had no time for visions.

CHAPTER XI

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

Belinda worked that morning in the operating ward until her knees shook under her and she felt that she would drop.

The guns continued to thunder and shake the huts. The stretcher bearers came and went. The three operating tables were so thickly surrounded by white-gowned surgeons that one could not see what was upon them.

The directrice seized Belinda at last and dragged her out of the ward.

"I've been looking for you," she said.

"Oh, Madame!" gasped the girl. "I feel I cannot——"

"Who wants you to? You've done too much already," interrupted the directrice. "It is time you had your soup. Haven't had anything to eat yet, I suppose? How many times must I warn you girls that your first duty to the wounded in your charge is to yourselves?"

The decisive little woman drove the girl to the dining-hut, where other nurses were being supplied with the necessities of life. They were all oddly silent and preoccupied this morning. Even the most volatile Frenchwoman of them all wore a subdued air.

The routine in the wards was much disturbed. Belinda went to Salle III as soon as her nerves were less aquiver. She had learned something about herself this morning that she had not known before. Technically she would never be a good war nurse! The directrice was right. A very few years of such work would leave Belinda Melnotte a nervous wreck.

The stretcher-bearers had already begun to bring into her ward from the operating room all the surgeons had left of the broken bodies sent back from the postes de secours.

It had begun to rain heavily. The guns rolled on as though they would never cease. Every time the knee of the leading brancardier thrust open the swinging door of the ward, cold rain and wind swept in.

Little Erard had a brisk fire burning in the stove, however; and it was well, for there was a great call among the patients for hot-water bottles. They complained, too, that Belinda had not given them her usual attention. Marius thundered forth maledictions upon poor Erard. The little infirmier had accidentally spilled a little egg upon the blessé's clean nightshirt.

"But remember, Marius, we have much to do to-day," the nurse admonished him. "They will fill our ward with unfortunate opérés."

"Ah, the dirty fellows!" growled Marius. "Why do they not take them elsewhere? We do not want them here."

Sympathy for each other's wounds is not always at a high mark among the blessés; but when Gaston, who lacked a leg and an arm both on the same side, so, as he said, he must always go lopsided, pointed out that nobody was keeping Marius from leaving the ward and going out into the rain if he wished to, the growler was silenced.

Sometimes when the door opened to admit a stretcher the wind blew out the alcohol lamp over which the syringe was boiling. The brancardiers left muddy boot prints down the ward. They dumped the opérés almost carelessly into the beds, and clumped out again.

The beds in the ward were at last filled. Without little Erard, Belinda never would have got through that day. Nor did the wounded who had been with her so long fail, after a time, to appreciate her difficulties, all save Marius.

The day ended at last. She would have remained, but Madame la Directrice came herself, supplied a night nurse, and ordered the girl to go home for the rest she so badly needed.

"There is another day," said the woman sharply. "Or, if there is not—if this is the end of the world—all the better! The good God will attend to these blessés in that case.

"If you wear yourself out to-night, how will you do all these dressings to-morrow? And with only that little ape of a man, Erard, to help you? For there will be more, and yet more wounded. Hear the guns?"

As though one could shut the sullen roar of the guns out of one's ears! The hut shook and everything inside was in a tremor from the rolling discharges of the artillery on both sides. Under cover of this continual bombardment the infantry was trying to advance.

All day, Belinda learned, the aeroplanes had been flying above the smoke of the battle. Occasionally she had gone to the door of the ward for a breath of air and had peered each time into the clouds. But she could see none of the flying escadrilles serving on this sector.

She had not heard from Aunt Roberta regarding Frank Sanderson. Whether he had joined the French Flying Corps or not, she had no way of knowing. He might, even had he joined what was now called the Lafayette Escadrille, be assigned to this locality and be engaged in this very battle which seemed now so very terrible.

Her way home through the half-ruined village was lit by the glare of distant rockets and flares. The rain-drenched air shook with the heavy, sullen reports of big guns. Minerva's habitation, poor as it was, seemed a haven of refuge to the girl on this night. She was worn out in body and spirit.

She feared she would not be able to sleep; not, however, entirely because of the thundering of the cannon. The sights and sounds of the day had strongly affected her mind. With the horror and pity she felt for the torn and broken bodies of the men brought in from the trenches, had grown in Belinda Melnotte's heart a bitter hatred for the enemy that had caused their wounds.

For the time she was all French. These were her people—bound to her by ties of blood and ancestry. They were beating an invading foe back from the soil of their forefathers. With the vituperative Erard she was ready to call them Huns and barbarians.

Her heart was hot charged with these thoughts when she went to bed. And then, as her head touched the pillow, exhausted nature asserted itself. Almost instantly Belinda fell asleep; nor did she awaken at her usual early hour.

When finally the awakening came she thought at first it was a Sunday morning at home, it was so quiet. The sun was coming up, round and rosy.

The appreciation of this last fact aroused her thoroughly. She knew she must be late. She sprang to the window to see the fields covered with low-rolling mist. Nothing was to be seen in the direction of the battlefield, and only a single broken-down ambulance was in sight on the road.

She scamped her toilet on this morning to rush down for a drink of coffee before hastening to the hospital. It was cold, for a biting air came out of the low-hung fog, and she drew her cape close around her throat as she walked hurriedly along the road.

She wondered how the battle had ended—or if it had ended. The hospital had been overcrowded when she left the evening before. Were they still bringing in those ruins of men that the guns had made?

As she walked on she became aware of a whirring and buzzing apparently directly in her rear. She turned out to make way for the automobile, the engine of which she thought she heard.

But nothing came out of the mist in the roadway. Yet the whirring and clattering increased. Then, suddenly, she knew that the sounds were in the air.

On one side of the road was a plowed field. Belinda realized that some pilot was seeking to make his landing in this open space; and landing in a fog is one of the most uncertain things that confront the pilot.

In the first place the altimetre which is supposed to register the aeroplane's height is never delicate enough for that purpose when the machine is descending for a landing. It is always fifteen or twenty yards behind the rapidly dropping aeroplane. Then, the pilot's eyesight is of little use in a fog.

It must be by exercise of almost a sixth sense that the aviator judges the position of the ground when coming down on such a day as this. Belinda knew this. She almost screamed a useless warning as she heard the clashing wings drawing nearer so swiftly.

Through the rolling mist a great shape—like nothing so much as a huge and horrid insect—came plunging down. Belinda did scream as the end of one wing brushed the top rail of the fence between field and road.

Low as the aeroplane was—its bounding wheels had already touched the earth—that slight collision almost threw it over. She ran along the road as fast as she could run to keep pace with the rocketing, creaking machine.

It stopped with a jolt. As is the rule when nearing the ground for a landing the aviator had unhooked his belt, and he was catapulted from his seat. The frightened girl saw him land upon hands and knees on the ground; but luckily that field had been recently plowed.

She started to climb the fence, when the aviator struggled to his feet. He saw her almost at once, and before making any examination of his aeroplane, he stumbled toward her.

He was so bundled in furs and leather, and so masked, that he looked like a being from another planet rather than a man. Although the sun had now begun to burn up the mist, objects were still too indistinct for either to descry clearly the other's features.

"Can Mademoiselle tell me where I have landed?" he asked in a muffled voice. "What town is this yonder?"

She told him the name of the village in a breathless voice that must have sounded strange to him, for he stepped nearer to peer across the fence into her face, and she shrank back, troubled by his scrutiny.

"By jove! Not you, Miss Melnotte?" was his amazed cry.

"Mr. Sanderson! How wonderful! What are you doing here?"

"Scouting. I was up for two hours. Pretty near frozen. Believe me, the temperature is low about six thousand feet up. And I got lost spiraling down. But you, Miss Melnotte?"

He was looking at her so earnestly, with such warmth in his gaze, that Belinda was forced to lower the lashes over her own eyes. She could feel the accelerated pumping of her pulse. The bitter, bitter thoughts she had harbored regarding Frank Sanderson suddenly melted, now that he was with her.

She told him swiftly of her work and where her hospital unit lay.

"I must hurry to my blessés—I am late now," Belinda went on. "It was such a terrible day yesterday. And you are in danger here, too."

This final observation seemed almost to burst unbidden from her lips. Sanderson pressed her hands quickly.

"It's very sweet of you to say so, Miss Melnotte."

"There—there has been nobody I knew so near the battleline before," she faltered. "It seems terrible that you should be flying here."

"But you are housed much nearer the danger zone than I," he said. "Why did you not take up your work in a base hospital?"

"Why did you join the Flying Corps instead of doing some safer work?" she returned.

"Oh, there's excitement in this flying."

"And after yesterday," she said sadly, "I see that there is plenty of excitement in my work."

"You are wonderfully courageous," he said. "But I shall worry, now that I know you are so exposed."

She ignored this suggestion of his intimate interest, saying only:

"Perhaps the battle is ended. There are no guns this morning."

"It is only a lull," he responded earnestly. "I know that we are about to make a strong attack all along this sector. That is why I must hasten my return. May I hope to see you again, Miss Melnotte?"

"I hope you will be spared to," she replied frankly. "I must go now. Is your machine all right? Can you mount again?"

"Must. I'm due back there at B——," and he pointed.

"It is wonderful—this flying."

"It's a bit ticklish," he said. Then, with a laugh: "You should see Captain Raphe Dexter at it!"

"He has not actually taken to flying? Aunt Roberta said——"

"He surely has. Been up with me at Pau. He is now taking a course in a private aviation school, he writes me. He's a wise old bird. I believe some of his money is coming to our escadrille. He's as plucky as they make 'em, and a fine old gentleman!"

He shook hands with her again and started for the Nieuport. She watched him from the roadway and waited, late as she was, until he was in the air before continuing her way toward the hospital.

Sanderson circled above her head in the aeroplane, like a great bird, and then, mounting higher, winged his way to the rear.

CHAPTER XII

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

The médecin major himself had hurried to the front and was going through the wards and asking questions when Belinda arrived at the hospital.

The battle had opened unexpectedly, and no time had been given to weed out those blessés who were convalescent. More wounded would be coming in hourly, and now all that could be done was to send those patients that might be moved with any degree of safety to the base hospitals.

That meant transferring them by ambulance to the town where a train sanitaire would take them to the extreme rear. It was known the postes de secours were overflowing and that all the wounded—some of them Germans—had not been removed from the ground between the two lines of trenches.

There had been charging and counter-charging across this No-Man's-Land and the Red Cross men at the battle line made no distinction between fallen enemy and fallen friend.

So Belinda saw all but six of her old patients sent away before noon. Gaston actually wept and kissed her hands at parting. Even grouchy Marius expressed his good wishes for her future—of course, in his own peculiar way.

"The dogs that follow us, Mademoiselle, can be no worse than the dogs who leave. Mon Dieu! No!"

In spite of these removals, this proved to be a trying day for the young Red Cross nurse. There were three deaths among the opérés before night. The médecin chef himself came, at her report, to see what was the matter. There were four others for whom she had fears—grands blessés all.

Belinda had no desire to make a record in healing the wounded who came to her ward. Of course, it was very fine if Madame la Directrice could report to headquarters that so many blessés passed through her hospital and that of them all only a small number were lost. But to Belinda mere figures entered very slightly into the work.

Her humane instincts revolted from looking at the work as "the job." To "make a record" was farthest from her thoughts.

She was only desirous each day of making those under her care as comfortable as possible; to ease pain where it was being suffered so bravely; to cheer the hours of these men who had done their duty at the front and were now doing their duty here on the hospital cots.

They were all brave fellows—even those who were the very hardest to handle. During the interval before this last battle commenced the general had come through the ward and pinned the Médaille Militaire over the hearts of some of her worst patients for acts of bravery performed on the field. Even upon the egg-stained nightshirt of Marius the medal had been pinned.

The girl from America saw and appreciated the human side of this tragedy too much to be finally successful as a nurse in a war hospital. She realized this fact quite keenly, but she had no idea of asking to be relieved.

She knew she had made her charges happier—more cheerful—more comfortable. Whatever the work might take out of her, she had helped them all. Those who were removed loved her. The spoken blessings of some of them rang in her ears. The kisses of the courteous Gaston on her hands were still warm. Even the eyes of Marius as he was taken out assured her that he never would forget her.

"It is worth while. It is worth the sacrifice of self," Belinda thought as, with the ward finally cleared up again, she waited for the fresh accession of wounded.

Suddenly there was a call for her outside. The great guns had been silent all day, and since the visit of the médecin major more wounded had been taken away than had been brought in. But now the ambulances were rolling in again from the front. During the lull the wounded were being picked up from the fields between the lines—some of them having lain there in the rain and cold for thirty-six hours.

Madame la Directrice, coming to Belinda's ward, said to the girl:

"You are familiar with German, are you not, Mademoiselle Melnotte?"

"I speak the language—yes, Madame," the girl replied.

"Take these men, then, to Salle III," ordered the directrice.

The men on the stretchers were prisoners. The gray-green uniforms—where the garments had not been stripped from the bodies—were unmistakable. The type of countenance as well was unmistakable.

In silence the German wounded were brought into the ward. They, too, were silent; even their groans were stifled as they lay shattered beside their enemies. If the French soldiers might have reviled them at another time, they did not do so now.

The brancardiers lifted the broken bodies from the stretchers to Belinda's clean beds. Most of their foulness had been removed in the receiving ward. Yet the girl almost shrank from touching them.

In her heart was bitter resentment against these members of a race that had plunged the whole world into war. She could not forget the putrid, awful cases of gas gangrene which had been under her care, the results of a horrid and barbarous method of warfare utterly unknown in a presumably Christian world until the brains of Teutonic scientists had suggested it.

Other awful putrefactions and criminal mutilations had come under her eyes in this hospital, directly due to Prussian methods of warfare. She could not forget them; she could not escape their significance. To her these grim, wounded men brought in as prisoners did not seem at all like the blessés she had been nursing. Pity excused none of their faults.

She dressed their wounds as carefully as she did those of her French patients. She listened to them, if they spoke, as patiently as to the others. Yet for that first day and the next her horror of these alien prisoners almost stifled her natural tenderness when she approached them.

Belinda had, during these weeks at the field hospital, become thoroughly imbued with the hatred of the French for their ancient enemies, and by their attitude toward them. She had listened to little but tales of the barbarisms of the detested "Boches." Her mind was filled with stories of rapine and vandalism on the part of the Prussian-baited German hordes.

Yet she was wise enough to hide these deeper feelings from the orderlies and stretcher-bearers, as well as from little Erard. The latter's fantastically expressed hatred of the enemy had been so frequently shown that Belinda feared an outbreak when he was called upon to help with these German wounded.

Nor was she wrong in this expectation. Only, the crooked little man's explosion of feeling was not just what the nurse had expected.

One of the strangers could keep nothing on his stomach at first, and, knowing little French, the poor fellow was slow in making his need of the basin understood by Erard.

"Ah, these sales étrangers!" growled Erard. "Nom de Dieu! that I should serve the cochon! Why do they not let them die where they fall? Or stick them with the bayonet, as they do our poor poilus when they have too many prisoners?"

Then suddenly he saw how pallid the man was and how he had fallen limply on his pillow.

"Ah, Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!" he called softly to Belinda. "Come quickly! What shall we do? This poor fellow is dying!"

And the two worked over the man an hour to save him once more from the grave.

At the end of the ward a delirious patient had been flung upon a cot. Had he not been so weak they must have strapped him down. From side to side he rolled his head. He was just a pretty, fair-haired boy—a mother's boy. And if that mother could have seen the poor, tortured limbs and the great shrapnel wound in his thigh!

Belinda went to his side no more frequently than she did to the others. Yet she was haunted by the suffering and by the youth of the lad. Once she lingered to lay a palm upon his pain-wrinkled, sweating brow.

"Ach, liebes Mütterlein! Mein Mütterlein!" he murmured, and somehow managed to seize the nurse's hand.

For ten minutes Belinda stood, until the weak fingers slipped from her hand and the boy slept. And what were her thoughts?

Not of the horrors of war. Not of the criminal practices of a blood-inflamed soldiery fighting for the already moribund issue of the Divine Right of Kings. Not of the wrongs of France.

She suddenly had a vision of a grassy lane, on either hand old but pleasant houses with red-tiled or thatched roofs, a rambling inn on one side, a footbridge over a stream at the end of the lane, and a gristmill with its babbling wheel.

Marching out of one dooryard into the lane defiled a phalanx of geese led by a high-headed old gander. The little girl, Belinda herself, in the short petticoats and with the plaits of hair down her back, who was standing in the lane was a stranger and she was afraid of that gander.

But here to her rescue came running two tow-headed lads—not older than herself, but braver. They were her defense and comfort.

Carl and Paul, her cousins! Somewhere they were fighting with the enemies of France! Or were they already shot down? And did they lie, like this poor lad, in some hospital at the mercy of strangers?

Another incident served to impress the girl's mind deeply. The battle had rumbled away along the front to other sectors. But the passing to and from the trenches of troops and the heavy rumbling of the wagons continued past the hospital, day and night.

The Flying Corps, too, was busy, and Belinda was not too much engaged with her own work to worry about Frank Sanderson. How did he fare? There were airplanes being shot down, she heard, every day above the trenches. If the aviators fell within the German lines they were seldom heard of again. They were considered spies, of course. And, then, there are few falls, whether in peace or war, of flying machines that do not compass the pilot's death.

Then one day there walked into Salle III two visitors—first a smart old man in a blue suit and with a broad smile upon his sea-bronzed countenance, and behind him Sanderson himself with a hamper on his arm.

"Captain Dexter!" cried the nurse, giving both her hands to the beaming shipmaster, but looking over his shoulder at Sanderson.

"What did I tell you?" demanded the Yankee captain of the aviator. "I told you she'd be tickled to death to see folks from home."

"Home?" repeated Belinda, a little startled by the thought of America being her home.

"By Hannah!" pursued the shipmaster. "Isn't she a regular Yankee girl? I'm proud of you young folks that have come over here to give these Johnny Crapauds a hand in their fight. I meet you everywhere I go about France—in the air, on the auto-busses—these jitneys as I'd call 'em at home—carryin' the wounded; and best of all in the hospitals. All of you doin' your 'bit,' as John Bull calls it. Well! Well! I told you, Frank, that she'd be glad to see us."

The nurse had given the young man her hand.

"And we haven't come empty-handed," went on Captain Dexter in his loud, cheerful tone. "Got something for your boys here——"

"They are mostly Germans now in this ward," Belinda interrupted. "Prisoners."

"By Hannah! That so?"

"The poor fellows!" Sanderson said. "We've got candy and cakes. The captain insisted they'd be appreciated by fellows who have to live mostly on broth," and he laughed.

There were other comforts, too, in the hamper. Some things the sight of which almost brought tears to the nurse's eyes, for there were not many luxuries seen in the wards. She noticed that the captain himself was surprised by some of the articles taken out of the hamper, and she believed the old man's thoughtfulness had not suggested all the comforts produced. Lastly came a quantity of cigarettes and tobacco, with pipes—the greatest boon possible to those blessés who were convalescent.

Belinda watched, too, Sanderson's manner as he went down the ward distributing to the occupants of the cots such of the dainties as she said each might have. He could speak German with the same facility that he spoke French, and he was as cheerful and kindly to the Germans as to the few French left in Salle III.

Indeed, for the first time since the influx of prisoners a spirit of cheerfulness spread through the ward. Some of these silent, suffering prisoners, so far from their homes and with wearisome confinement facing them, actually smiled.

Sanderson discovered something that Belinda had not learned. One of the Germans—a man somewhat older than his fellows—could speak broken English.

"Wie geht es? You are from America, yet?" he said to Sanderson. "I lif' there, too."

"By Hannah!" roared Captain Dexter from the rear, "why didn't you stay there?"

"Yes, I wish I was back there alretty. But I haf' to fight for the Fatherland."

"A reservist," whispered Belinda. But she had not learned this about him before. She really had not felt interested enough in the bearded, silent man to talk much with him.

But Sanderson seemed interested in everybody in the ward and was immensely cheering. Jacob, as was the bearded man's name, told the young aviator he had a delicatessen store in New York, on the upper East Side.

"But, soh!" he blew a sigh. "I may never see it again."

The energetic Captain Dexter had to view the entire hospital, and went off with one of the visiting doctors for that purpose. It was being whispered about among the hospital attendants that the "so-rich" and benevolent Américain was about to furnish money for an entire hospital unit to the Croix Rouge.

"The skipper must be causing his three 'darters' a great deal of worry of mind just now," chuckled Sanderson, remaining with Belinda. "He's drawn on his bankers for so much money that, he tells me, Mesdames Prudence, Patience and Penelope tried to hold up the advances, thinking the poor old chap had gone quite off his head and had become demoralized by the wickedness and gaieties of Paris. They do not realize that Paris at present is about as lively as its namesake in Kentucky, U. S. A.!

"And what good the old gentleman manages to do with his money—my word! He spends it like a sailor ashore with his pay in his pocket. The other day I found him strapped—flat broke, and without enough to pay for his dinner. But it's worrying the three 'darters.'"

"They must be disturbed about him, I suppose," Belinda agreed. "And he's such a splendid, brave old man."

"He's the kind of American I'm proud of," the aviator said earnestly. "Perhaps he may be somewhat boastful, but in these days that has actually become a virtue. You must confess, Miss Melnotte, that we Americans have much to be proud of."

"Have we?" she retorted, smiling rather seriously. "I do not know—I am not sure that I may claim much part in America or things American."

"Ah!" he said, with quick understanding. "This work here has made you feel that your sympathies are all with your father's people?"

"It is so," she admitted.

"You lack the proper perspective—yet," he said, nodding. "But you will get it before long, I am sure. The skipper and I have an advantage over you, to be sure. But your country—America—will be in this war before long."

"God forbid!" she murmured.

"It cannot be helped. The autocratic government of Germany has gone mad with lust of blood and power. Before long," and he gestured toward the Stars and Stripes so brightly gleaming in her trophy of banners on the wall, "that flag will become the most beautiful thing you ever looked upon!"

"Oh, Mr. Sanderson!" she said deprecatingly. "You are over-enthusiastic. You seem so sure the United States will come in."

"As sure as I am of my own existence," he told her gravely. Then, in a suddenly altered tone, and speaking softly, he added: "I wish, indeed, I were as sure of something else."

"Yes?" she said, rather absently.

He rushed on boyishly, desperately:

"I wish I were sure of how you will feel about me after the war is over. Miss Melnotte—Belinda——"

"Mr. Sanderson!" she exclaimed, drawing away from him. "Surely you are forgetting yourself."

"Oh, Belinda——"

"If you have no regard for yourself—for your duty as a man," the girl cried hoarsely, "show some compassion for me."

"But, Belinda, listen! I tell you——"

"You may tell me nothing! Nothing! You have no right to speak to me in this way."

"You—you forbid me?" he stammered, gazing at her with a hurt expression. Her eyes were aflame, her cheeks hot with anger. Yet she trembled through all her frame. "Do you mean this?" he went on slowly.

"Certainly I mean it," she declared fiercely. "Never speak in this vein again. If you do I must forget that we are even acquaintances, Mr. Sanderson."

The return of Captain Dexter made further speech between them impossible. Belinda would not even take Sanderson's hand when the visitors departed.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PREPARATION

Belinda Melnotte took to her lodging that night a heavy and troubled spirit. Sanderson's visit to the hospital had lifted not at all the burden of doubt and unhappiness that she had borne so long.

She confessed to herself—and confessed it with shame—that the appearance of the young aviator had caused her joy unspeakable. When he had clasped her hands she had been obliged to fix her gaze elsewhere that Sanderson might not see in her eyes the very expression he evidently longed to see there.

Yet, how she had dismissed and flouted him! Every word she said in spurning his half-spoken address had cut her own heart like a knife.

She loved him. She needed him particularly now in her heavy trials and ungrateful tasks at the hospital. Ah, if beside her stood just such a strong-souled, tender yet cheering presence as the aviator possessed!

Yet she cried: "Unworthy! Unworthy! He must be bad! He is!"

That other woman and her children stood beside the aviator in Belinda's vision. She could not recall his presence to her thought without bringing up, too, the wraiths of the family he must wrong in his thoughts every time he tried to address her—Belinda—with affection!

Even if he contemplated divorcing Stella, the Red Cross nurse could not think of him as her fit mate. It was against her religious training and abhorrent to her own conscience.

It became difficult for Belinda to bring into her ward a cheerful face, as had been her wont, to speak lightly to her charges, to raise—as she had heretofore—the spiritual temperature.

Desultory fighting continued; but after all there had been no great push. It was abandoned, they said, till spring. Snow and mud, rain and frost, made of all Northern France where the trenches lay an almost impassable wilderness. Nature and the elements gave the embattled armies a respite from the fray.

That is, these circumstances made all but ordinary trench fighting and air activities impossible. There were sorties and counter attacks along the sector almost daily; but the general result was nil for either side.

The Red Cross nurse went back to Minerva's one evening under a lowering sky that was copper colored by the rays of the setting sun all along the horizon. The landscape, Belinda thought, was the dreariest she had ever seen. Here and there stood tortured, broken trees, where shells had burst in the branches. Everywhere in the fields were marmite holes, or the craters made by the shells from the "Big Berthas." Many of the houses along the way had been burst asunder by the shells, and, of course, had never been repaired.

In her room under the now-thatched eaves of the stone-walled cottage Belinda delayed undressing, not because her body was not wearied, but because her brain was wide, wide awake. In the dull radiance of a smoky lamp she read over again the few letters from Aunt Roberta and from girls whom she had known in New York or at college that had reached her since she had come to the battlefields.

There was a cheerful note in all—even in Aunt Roberta's.

"Captain Dexter has called again and reports that you are very well and as pretty as ever. Ah, he is a dear man. He knows how to compliment a woman. He should be French," was the burden of Aunt Roberta's last letter.

"He calls in the morning in a taxicab and takes me to drive, if I have time to go. In the afternoon he sometimes takes tea with me. That is, if I and Margot are not housecleaning. Such a house as this is for dirt! And Margot must be watched like a hawk or she will sweep the sweepings under the furniture. If all goes well the captain sometimes takes me to dinner. The cafés and restaurants are not very gay, I must confess. It is very different now from my remembrance of Paris as it used to be. Why, it is not even as gay as New York! And these landlords here evidently never heard of hot-water supply! All I get through the rusty registers in these rooms, too, is the smell of coal gas—no heat, I vow! I know why the nobles who once lived in this hotel are here no more; they all froze to death in the cold winter of '74—and the present winter promises to be even colder. I have set up a coal stove in the parlor, as the tradesmen seem to know nothing about oil heaters. The captain says he would like to have the opportunity of putting his feet up on a base-burner (whatever that may be) and of eating a baked apple at night before he retires, as he used to do in Old Saybrook. That Old Saybrook must, in truth, be a place very charming."

There were three of Belinda's school friends in France—one married to a Frenchman and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of French patriotism; the other two working for the suffering wounded. But letters from all three were in cheerful vein. The wearied girl mentally compared their state with her own. In her diary she wrote:

"There is something lacking in my life. I have no spring left in me. It is not that I am more exhausted in body than I used sometimes to be in the hospital at home (the 'home' was crossed out and 'New York' written instead), but I miss something—I need something——"

A clatter against the closed shutter of her window made the girl look up. Again the rattling—was it pebbles?—startled the silence of the room. The whole house was still.

Belinda stood up, dropping her pen, one hand upon her heart. She saw her face in the little oval mirror over her dressing-table. Her lips were wreathed in a smile, her eyes were aglow. Her appearance startled the girl.

She crossed the room quite calmly as, for a third time, the pebbles clattered on the shutter. She unhooked and pushed back the swinging blind. A figure stood in the middle of the road, looking up at her.

"Belinda! Miss Melnotte!"

"Yes."

"This is Sanderson."

"I know," breathed the girl, resting both palms on the window-sill and looking down upon him. If her face had not been in the shadow! If he could have seen her luminous eyes!

"I wanted to see you again—just to speak to you," he pleaded, coming closer under the window.

"What is it? You are not going back?" she asked, but keeping her voice perfectly steady.

"No. I am going forward." He laughed with a strange tenseness in his tone. "I cannot tell you much about it. It is forbidden. 'Even the night hath ears.'"

"Oh! An air attack?" she whispered.

"In force. Several squadrons. Before daybreak. I—I wished to see you—to speak to you. If I should not return at once, you'll—you'll tell Captain Dexter to attend to my papers. He'll understand. I've fixed things for the kiddies——"

"Oh! Yes," she said. Her voice was suddenly hoarse and dry. She drew back further into the shadow.

"Good-by, Miss Melnotte—Belinda."

"Good-by, Mr. Sanderson."

He turned away rather abruptly and trudged back along the road toward the town.

She stood long at the casement—long after he was out of sight, and her thoughts were bitter. She had let him go from her without a tender word—without a whisper to console him. She fought down sternly the desire to call him back—to slip into her cape and run after him along the dark and lonely road.

He would go into the air at dawn on a mission that seemed to her mind almost sure to have a fatal ending. How often he faced death in his daily flights she did not know. But evidently Frank Sanderson considered this present venture as threatening more than usual peril, or he would not have come so far for a last glimpse of her.

A last glimpse! She thought of that moment on the Belle o' Perth when the nearness of death from the submarine attack was so heavy upon them. She had been kinder to him then. She had let him see for a moment that she cared.

Would he remember that weakness on her part when he mounted into the skies at dawn? Or would his last thought of her be as she was when she let him go from her window without a word of cheer?

On Sanderson's part, plodding gloomily campward, he felt as though he had been guilty of a weakness in venturing to see Belinda. He had no right to try to interest the girl in his affairs. How chaotic those affairs might be in another twenty-four hours!

He had learned that afternoon that there was to be a strong air attack over the German lines. For some reason the general in command desired the Germans harassed at this point.

The town was filled with new troops and arriving guns and supplies. The loaded, low-hung wagons ground through the streets and on toward the north. Troops of all kinds marched through—the most of them fresh, lively young fellows who hailed the aviators as they passed their camp with, "Hey, Bill!" "'Ello, Charley!" "Américain Aviateur! Hi! Hi!"

A train of giant mortars had gone up only two days before, mounted on great trucks and drawn by big motor lorries. It seemed as though all the world was in arms and was deploying past that aviation camp.

The preparations for the coming flight of at least three squadrons—perhaps more—were carried on in secret; yet a bustle all through the camps preceded it. The first business was an air reconnaissance. Every pilot wished personally to see that his machine was in the best shape possible, leaving nothing to chance, and very little to the judgment of his mechanicians.

Sanderson's aeroplane was a small Nieuport—one of those called by the French appareils de chasse on account of their great speed (over one hundred miles an hour)—and had long since reached the front. The young American had been favorably marked during the winter as a cool and well-balanced pilot, with plenty of nerve and daring in reserve. His type of machine made him distinctly a fighting aviateur.

As he came back from his call upon the Red Cross nurse, foot-weary and not altogether composed in his mind, it was midnight. Before he reached the château where the members of his escadrille were quartered, he saw the bombarding unit going up—the first of this planned aerial attack on the Germans.

The machines mounted slowly, turning in great circles overhead until they reached the proper altitude—twenty-two of them. Then they vanished with their destructive bombs into the north. These bombs have propellers attached so as to retard their fall; otherwise they might sink too deeply into the earth to do much damage when they explode.

Before the bombarding squadron returned in the early morning the order came for the battleplanes to get under way. Sanderson had not had much sleep, but he was perfectly ready for the work in hand.

As the young American "jumped" his aeroplane from the ground and soared upward he saw many other machines rising—not only of his own escadrille, but of the several others brought to the sector for this attack.

His Nieuport scaled up the airways at a sharp angle—too sharp, perhaps, with the wind that was blowing. Surely the American was not careless in his management of the aeroplane—on such an occasion as this, too!

Yet his mind might not have been wholly upon the work before him. Was Belinda thinking of him at this moment? Was she kinder to him in her secret thoughts than she was openly?

She must know that an attack in force upon the German aircraft fleet would mean the destruction of many French aeroplanes and the death of their pilots. He had no charm against disaster!

Suddenly his Nieuport swerved, rolled sideways, and seemed about to turn over. Sanderson shut off the motor. The machine, quivering and shaking, seemed to stand still on its tail for a moment.

A stronger draft of air had struck the wings, and only the pilot's quick action in shutting off the motor had saved him from a fatal accident. The Nieuport righted itself, and Sanderson drove on after the members of his escadrille.

CHAPTER XIV

AMID WAR'S ALARMS

Sanderson, in his fast-flying Nieuport, shaped his course in a long slant toward the trenches. He flew over the hospital in which Belinda worked. She might then be wending her way toward it from her lodging. If so, and if she saw the flotilla of aeroplanes overhead would she think of him?

The whole sector along the trenches had become alive since the first streak of light. And of course the Germans were just as busy. From above, the conflict seemed like a huge cauldron, over which the steam hung like a cloud, and out of which pale rockets shot—the exploding shrapnel.

The yellow mist rose to a great height, in places obscuring the battleline for many rods. Flashes, like the snapping of parlor matches, identified the positions of the guns. In some places, and for hundreds of yards, the gun-carriages touched one another.

In other spots Sanderson could easily descry the network of trenches, at certain points broken and half obliterated by muddy excavations—huge shell holes.

It was difficult at some points to tell the French from the German trenches, they were so close together. It was a horrid, barren waste, this land. Forests had been wiped out, fields plowed so deeply by shell and shrapnel that it almost seemed that for decades no green thing would ever grow there.

Ruined villages lay like heaps of potsherd; in color the land was all a dirty brown.

High, as Sanderson was now, above this boiling, turgid pit, it was a silent battle. The noise of his motor drowned the whistle of the shells and the roar of the bombardment.

The French artillery biplanes were hovering over the German lines like buzzards over contemplated prey. And surely the carrion was in the making.

On sentinel duty, as he was, Sanderson mounted higher to watch for attacking German aeroplanes. A dull, explosive sound suddenly reached his ears. He saw that certain white puffs were following him about—exploding shrapnel from the enemy's anti-aircraft guns.

The work that fell to his share on this occasion, however, was not all observational. Up from behind the German lines rose a squadron of fighting Fokkers attended by smaller tauben. They spread out as they advanced, and so could not always protect each other's flanks.

The American aviator saw his opportunity. He shot from an eight-thousand-foot level in a sharp slant down upon one of the heavier German machines that had come boldly over the French trenches. Pointing his Nieuport with exactness he fired the mitrailleuse and saw with satisfaction the havoc accomplished which had been his desire.

The heavier machine fell through the air like a wounded bird. Flames broke out, for as is always the case when shot down over enemy trenches, the German aviator ignited his gasoline tank that the machine might be destroyed rather than be of use to the French.

Sanderson, shooting southward after his brief conflict, was not untouched. The tauben on duty had fired on him. A bullet had plowed a furrow across one of his shoulders, and he felt a trickle of blood into his shoe from a scratch above his left ankle.

But greater than these personal hurts was another discovery he made. A bullet had severed a metal stability control. By all the rules of aviation he should have lost control of his aeroplane and come down in a fatal smash.

Sanderson did not lose his head. He was quite aware, when the rod snapped, that death rode at his shoulder. He seized the broken stay and held on, steering with his other hand. This called for all the strength he possessed; for if an automobile traveling fifty miles an hour needs muscle as well as skill at the wheel, how much more does an aeroplane pilot need strength in handling his machine traveling at twice that speed!

The American, still slanting downward, crossed above the French trenches, aiming to descend in a not-far-distant field, a little out of the line of fire, where repairs could be made. Fate, however, had more in store for him. A whirling squall of wind suddenly caught his Nieuport, and he felt the tail of the machine go down and the nose shoot up.

He was caught in the fatal perte de vitesse.

There are two ways in which the aviator may know when he is approaching the danger point of "loss of speed"—by closely watching the speed indicator and by feeling the controls. The moment the controls become lifeless and have no resistance the pilot must act instantly to regain his momentum.

But situated as Sanderson was, he had no chance to save himself. The vrille was on before he could as much as think. His aeroplane was suddenly descending in a whirlpool—spinning like a match in a basin.

The Nieuport was making the corner of one wing a pivot and was revolving about it—the first turn slowly, but each succeeding turn increasing in speed.

Sanderson whispered the one word "Belinda" as he looked out and saw that he was less than a thousand feet above ground and approaching it at an alarming rate of speed. He had shut off the motor the instant of the alarm, or the Nieuport would have folded up like a book.

He had seen so many similar accidents where pilots had "slipped off the wing." Seldom if ever had such accidents turned out other than utter tragedies.

But there was one thing he knew—a possible way of salvation, though almost an impossibility for any save the coolest brain. It is harder to do nothing when danger threatens than anything else—unless one is paralyzed with fear. And Frank Sanderson was not the person to be bemused by peril.

So this one thing he did—nothing. He let go of everything save the broken control rod and shut his eyes. He felt the sickening down-rush of the aeroplane and sensed, too, the up-rush of the ground.

Expecting a crash that would be the last sound in his ears, the last physical feeling he would have in this world, he was suddenly shocked by the lurching and righting of the aeroplane. He turned on the motor, recovered the steering wheel and control, finding himself on a line of flight scarcely two hundred feet above the ground.

He came safely down in a field where a party of wondering French soldiers welcomed him with acclamation. They had seen the perte de vitesse and thought the Américain aviateur had been shot down.

A first-aid man of the Red Cross dressed Frank's slight wounds, while an amateur mechanician repaired the broken stability rod. In half an hour he took his machine up again and winged his way back to the firing line, amid the cheers of the soldiers.

Clouds were gathering in the upper strata of air, and at the usual observation level these drifting blankets of mist began to obstruct his view of the battlefield and the space directly above it. He was therefore driven down to the six-thousand-foot level and later to five thousand feet.

There was fighting between the German and French aeroplanes over other parts of the field; but just at present all seemed quiet near Sanderson.

A great cloud drifted over and touched him like a chill and almost palpable hand. He felt that this was no place in which to remain, and was about to descend a few hundred feet to escape the menace of the cloud when, in shutting off his motor preparatory for the volplane, he distinguished the noise of another motor near by.

He shot a keen glance about. He marked each friendly aeroplane in his group. All the German machines he saw were at a distance.

Then he suddenly decided that the motor he heard must be that of an aeroplane in the midst of the cloud just above him. An enemy aeroplane!

He had been observed from a distance, and a German taube had been sent to attack him, the enemy using the screen of this cloud to make the attack sure. As Sanderson started downward he saw the black shape of the taube swoop out of the cloud.

His antagonist had the advantage at the start, and well Sanderson knew it, for he was attacking the American's machine from above. The German's mitrailleuse was already beginning to spit a hail of bullets about the falling aeroplane, a fire which the American could not return until he could change his flight and "point" his machine.

Every moment Sanderson delayed in changing his course added to his peril, yet he hesitated to mount upward again. There was a chance—a narrow one but a conclusive strategy if successful—that he was tempted to put to the test. It was a desperate expedient and might end fatally to himself as well as to the German; yet the American contemplated putting it into execution.

The German continued to shoot as he fell upon Sanderson's machine, and already there were several fresh bullet holes through the wings of the latter's aeroplane. As always, the fear of a bullet in his gasoline tank fretted the American's mind. And, too, he had thus far not fired a shot in self-defense.

It was the desperate resort, therefore, that he embraced. He started his motor, righted his aeroplane, and as soon as he was sure of his speed, lifted the machine's nose for a higher altitude.

Seeing this change on the part of the Nieuport, the pilot of the taube instantly followed suit. At least, he shot into a level and his own motor began to buzz again.

But Sanderson had expected this. He knew the German would not be likely to give him a chance to pass and rake him broadside with his mitrailleuse. He, however, trusted in the speed of the Nieuport. As though shot out of one of the great guns hammering awe at each other below, his appareil de chasse darted up, turned, and was aimed directly for the under side of the taube—and at the most vulnerable part, the tail.

The speed of the American's aeroplane was what counted. His rain of bullets crippled the German machine. It "went off on the wing," dropped some hundreds of yards, and then righted before Sanderson could turn again and shoot from above upon it.

Sanderson now had the advantage the German had previously held. He was the pursuer and the German was in flight.

He held, too, an added advantage. Sanderson had the German running for the rear of the French lines, having intervened his Nieuport between the enemy and escape to the northward.

The injury to the German's aeroplane made it positively necessary for its pilot to descend. And he was descending in enemy territory. This being the case, he did what every aviator is supposed to do in like circumstances—and what the German airman always does.

Racing downward for a landing, with Sanderson in hot pursuit, the pilot of the taube saw that he could not reach the earth in safety and there fire his gas-tank, so destroying his machine that it should yield no "comfort or support to the enemy." Sanderson saw his antagonist turn deliberately and fire his gasoline tank while he was yet some hundreds of feet above the ground. The little taube was on fire in a moment. The pilot still endeavored to make a landing and save his own life; but the flames enveloped him.

Sanderson redressed his machine and made a safe landing. The burning taube came down in one place near by, while in another spot had fallen all that was left of the brave fellow who had piloted it.

The American reached the remains of the German before anybody else. He stood with head uncovered while a field surgeon made a perfunctory examination of the charred heap.

"Indeed, yes, Monsieur Américain, he is dead," agreed the French doctor. "But he was a brave man though a Boche."

Disaster stalked with hooded face across these waste lands of Northern France. Belinda felt the spirit of it before she heard a word of retreat. Before, even, the broken troops toiled thickly past the hospital and through the village from the trenches, the Germans in her ward seemed to know that along this sector their countrymen were making gains.

Changes in the personnel of the ward had finally cleared out every French soldier Belinda had nursed. There were only Germans left, many of them seriously wounded. She spoke German all day long. Even Erard, with the facility of the Latin, had picked up a speaking vocabulary that served in his care of the detested "Boches." The little infirmier with his afflictions of harelip and twisted foot was really accorded more polite treatment by the Germans than he had been by his compatriots.

A nervous air of expectancy overlaid the entire hospital. The removal of such wounded as could be moved started afresh. The médecin chef was short in his replies to questions. Madame la Directrice was in tears.

The troops going up, who sometimes passed Belinda on the road as she trudged to and from Minerva's, did not at first betray the feeling that disaster was in the air. Though they were marching in coats already saturated by the rain and knew they might remain in that condition during their entire "stage" in the trenches, they seemed not to be daunted.

They plodded on, singing gaily, unmindful of rain and wind, weighted down by their equipment. They hailed the women they passed with: "Good-morning, Margot!" "Chère Is'belle!" "By the old mill site, to-night, Marie!"

But the men who came back!

They did not march back from the trenches at first. Sandwiched in with the ambulances along the crowded roads were motor-busses containing the dumb, stupid creatures that for a week had held back the enemy.

They looked scarcely human—brown with mud from head to foot, faces masked with dirt and a week's growth of beard. They looked at the passer-by with a faraway, half-unconscious expression, so utterly stupefied by the terrible bombardment and their miseries that they scarcely appreciated their escape.

The attack by the French along this front had not been a success, or so it seemed to the layman. If it had been a thrust to call German reserves from other places and center them here, to make the real attack by French and British more potent, as some said, perhaps it was a well-conducted piece of strategy.

But the enemy poured down upon the devoted soldiers holding the front of this sector and by mere weight of numbers—and weight of guns—forced the French to retreat. It went on so for several days. The French gave only a few yards at a time; but it was retreat!

Belinda had seen nothing of Sanderson since the night he had come to her window. Nor had she heard anything definite of him. Stories were rife that the American escadrille of flying men had conducted themselves with great honor in the raid over the German lines. One of their number had been killed.

Through Erard, who was the recipient of much gossip and who took a vivid interest in everything pertaining to the flying escadrilles, she tried to learn who the lost aviator was.

This was impossible. Bulletins sent out for general consumption are seldom read so near the battlefield.

She did hear that one of the younger members of the Lafayette Squadron was acclaimed an "ace." He had brought down the necessary number of enemy aeroplanes to receive that honorable title. Names, however, did not reach Belinda's ears.

Then there came something else to startle her ears. The boom of the great guns came nearer. Suddenly one afternoon a shell fell within the hospital enclosure.

It was a chance shot without doubt; but the explosion of the engine of destruction did as much damage as though it had been intended. The end of a ward was torn to pieces and three blessés and an orderly were killed outright. A Red Cross nurse was one of those removed from the ward and started upon an ambulance for the railroad that very night.

The order for evacuation came. All that night the ambulances rolled out with their groaning burdens for the rear. No more ambulances returning from the first-aid stations stopped at the hospital. The station must be abandoned.

All was in confusion. There were to be no cases removed this night from her ward, therefore Belinda could go home. The French wounded were to be taken out first.

The girl from America felt her assistance was just as much required by the German prisoners as by the brave Frenchmen. Three more shells fell during the night within the corporate limits of the village. She came back to the hospital early in the morning to find half the people gone and utter panic reigning.

It had seized upon many of the attendants of the hospital. Madame la Directrice had been slightly wounded by a falling timber the day before and the médecin chef had ordered her taken away despite her protestations. At once the nursing force went to pieces; for most of the nurses had depended utterly upon the strong mind and vigorous discipline of the energetic Frenchwoman.

Belinda found nobody in her ward save the prisoners. The sentinels at the doors were gone, too. Breakfast was ready and there was nobody to give it to the patients. The girl felt that her little world was fast toppling about her.

She removed her cape and bustled into her huge apron and cap. The ordinary formalities of the early morning hours must be dispensed with. First of all it was necessary for her blessés to eat.

In the midst of serving coffee and over-done eggs to the men who were able to be of some help to themselves, before taking the trays to the more helpless patients, little Erard put a very pasty-looking face in at the door.

"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!" he cried.

"What is the matter with you, Erard? You have deserted me!"

The infirmier pushed farther into the ward. He had a knapsack strapped to his shoulders and carried a cheap straw bag.

"Everybody goes, Mademoiselle!" he cried. "It is retreat! Hear?"

A terrific explosion sounded near—then a fusillade of bombs. Several German Fokkers had got by the French air scouts and were raining missiles upon the sector, while the "Big Berthas" were getting the range of the villages back of the line. These hamlets had been shelled before, and the people knew what it meant. Old Minerva had been packed up, ready to leave, before the girl had started for the hospital.

"What has that to do with us, Erard?" the nurse demanded. "Our duty is here. They have not yet ordered the evacuation of our ward."

"Nor will they, Mademoiselle," cried the little infirmier. "These sales Boches! Let them lie! Let their own guns cut them to shreds! They shell the hospital now."

His shriek arose above that of the shell that landed within the hedge. A window was broken. Belinda ran to pick up the bits of glass and close the aperture as best she could against the draft.

Erard had gone. She looked out of the door. A throng of orderlies, frightened nurses, the last of the French wounded, were crowding to the entrance gate.

The médecin chef was trying to preserve order and to "count noses." He was getting them off in the motor-busses and ambulances commandeered for the occasion. He turned and saw Belinda and beckoned commandingly.

Behind the girl lay thirty-four men on the cots of the ward—most of them helpless—unable even to rise unaided from their pillows. Jacob was almost the only patient who could hobble about. The poor lad whose condition had first roused Belinda's pity for the prisoners had pneumonia and must be attended hourly.

She shook her head. She understood only too well where her duty lay. But those poor sick and dying men——

The médecin chef, his mouth open, his clenched hands gesticulating his anger at what he considered her stupidity, started across the yard toward her. The gateway was emptied suddenly and she heard the throbbing of the engines as the autos made their departure.

She heard, too, the whistle of the falling shell. It burst with a deafening report overhead.

Belinda saw the médecin chef throw his hands heavenward, spin once, and fall with his face masked in blood, and featureless. By the posture of the limbs, by the utter stillness of the body, she knew it was useless to go to him. He had died instantly.

The girl staggered back into the ward and let the door swing shut. There was excitement here—excitement that would surely raise the temperatures of the weaker patients.

Jacob had climbed out of his cot and stood on trembling limbs in the short, gaily striped cotton flannel shirt that some woman in America had made in a spare hour. It was a grotesquely made garment, and the bewhiskered German was a grotesque figure in it.

"What is it, Fräulein?" he asked her.

"The station is abandoned. The Germans advance," she told him calmly. "But we must not lose heart—or hope. Be cool. Keep quiet. I have not forsaken you."

"Mein Gott!" gasped the old man. "Sie sind Deutsch!"

"I am the nurse—in charge of this ward," she said, almost fiercely. "Get back into bed, Jacob."

He obeyed her, and she finished serving the breakfasts, for there was no further alarm. Later, however, the man humbly asked to assist her with the more seriously wounded, and she accepted his offer in the spirit in which it was made.

She went no more to look out; but she knew by the immediate silence that the hospital enclosure was deserted. In the distance was the rumble of heavy lorries dragging away the big guns to prevent their capture by the Germans, and the rattle of cannons and caissons as well, as the horses galloped to the rear with the batteries.

Men's lives were being poured out like water to save these guns from capture. The roll of the advancing German batteries drew nearer. The marching by of troops was no longer heard. This was almost a rout; those who retreated made no secret of their desire to escape, and they ran!

Belinda tried to continue the usual routine of her work. She neglected none of the wounded. For the most part these Germans were silent before her; with each other they whispered excitedly.

Rescue for them was possibly near. But how about Belinda?

The dressings were over for the day. Even Ernest, the boyish pneumonia patient, was quieted. But the hour was late and nobody had eaten since breakfast. As for herself, a cup of coffee hastily swallowed had been all with which she had broken her fast.

Of course, the cooks had gone with the other hospital attendants. She wondered if she could find in the cooking hut the materials for a meal for her thirty-four patients. It was a task from which, after her tiring morning, she shrank.

And at that moment a heaven-sent smell seemed to assail her nostrils. Of course, it could not be! It must be an hallucination!

The door of the ward swung slowly inward. A figure in a cook's cap and long white apron backed in, bearing a huge cauldron of smoking broth.

He turned and Belinda saw the queer, twisted face of Erard.

"Mademoiselle," he said simply, "I could not leave you alone with these Boches. Non! non!"

CHAPTER XV

AT THE MERCY OF THE ENEMY

This long and anxious day closed, and night came. Belinda did not go back to old Minerva's. She was sure she would find nobody at the thatch-roofed cottage. Indeed, she might not find even the cottage itself.

Erard, a most unheroic figure in his soiled cook's apron and cap, insisted upon Belinda seeking rest. He took his usual place in nominal charge of the ward at night, after preparing a meal for all that was more filling than dainty.

The nurse lay within call and without removing her clothes; and thus managed to obtain a few hours' sleep.

The rumble and roar of the guns had now become so familiar to her ears that she scarcely noticed the noise—unless of a shell that burst near by. But not many of these startling explosions occurred. The big German guns were throwing their iron beyond the site of the abandoned hospital.

That Belinda had been left behind in the haste and confusion of the final evacuation was not to be wondered at. The injury to the directrice and the shocking death of the médecin chef had made the hurried departure from the hospital almost a rout.

The huddled body of the dead physician lay where it had fallen in the yard. There was no time to give to the dead when the wounded needed so much of her strength.

With no night nurse, no assistance of orderlies, the work bore heavily upon Belinda and her infirmier. Jacob did what he could; but his wounds had been painful and he was only able to hobble about the ward.

Erard crept to Belinda's side as she was busy preparing packs and bandages for the day's dressings, and whispered:

"Mademoiselle, what will you do when the Boches come? Me, I shall slip away. I am a small man—and a cripple. They will not bother one like me. But you, Mademoiselle——"

"I speak German," Belinda said briefly.

"But you wear the French insignia." He touched lightly with his finger the A. D. F. and bar on her breast. "Hide that," Erard whispered warningly. "Let even these Boches," with a gesture toward the ward, "forget it if they will. Take off your cap and the Red Cross, too. The German Red Cross nurses wear different caps—and their Geneva Cross is in different form, too. Be German, Mademoiselle. It is for the best."

"Papa Jacob says I am already German," Belinda said, with a smile.

"Ma foi! Let it be so. I swear you speak the gutturals like a native. Let them all think so."

It was, after all, good advice, and after a little hesitancy she obeyed. From what she had heard of the rudeness of Prussian officers she doubted if her position as a Red Cross worker—especially under the French Department—would aid her.

Nor was she at all sure how her present patients would treat her if the German troops marched in. Some of them she had cared for through many weeks; but they had been rasped and embittered by their imprisonment. They would not forget, perhaps, that she had nursed them under protest.

Erard had difficulty in finding food supplies for them all. He ventured outside the gate in the hedge and came back to report that the village was deserted. They had made breakfast; but he declared the prospect of another meal was limited to "cobblestone soup."

The little infirmier was absent on some mission from the ward when the first of the enemy arrived. Belinda, boiling instruments and writing up temperature charts just as though she expected the usual visit of the doctor, suddenly heard the hurried tramp of feet without. A command in German to "ground arms" followed. The door swung inward.

A man in steel helmet and long cloak strode into the ward. She heard the clank of his equipment as he stepped across the threshold.

Turning to let the door swing to, his eye caught the trophy of flags upon the end wall of the ward. The sight seemed to fire him with wrath.

He threw open his cloak and drew the saber from its scabbard with a single gesture.

He uttered an angry ejaculation, and with a sweeping blow cut the banners from their fastenings. As they fell he trampled upon them with his muddy boots.

He had not seen Belinda. She had risen shakingly at his entrance; but at this insult to the colors she flung herself forward, crying in English:

"Stop! You shall not!"

There was a rumble of excited voices behind her from the Germans on the cots. The officer swung about, his sword ready to receive the attack her cry seemed to threaten. When he saw it was but one woman he dropped the point of the weapon and strode a single pace forward, staring at her with dawning amazement.

The banners, entangled in his heavy boots, were kicked forward along the boards. The small American flag, broken from its wand, slithered to her feet. Belinda stooped, scarcely knowing why she did so, seized the silken flag and crumpling it as she rose again, thrust it into the bosom of her blouse.

"Ist es möglich?" gasped the corporal, thrusting back his helmet She saw his features and an answering cry broke from her lips:

"Carl! Carl Baum!"

"Belinda! My little cousin! 'Linda! Is it possible?"

He advanced his gloved hand instead of the sword and seized her doubtful one.

"What are you doing here, 'Linda?" he demanded. "Am I crazy? I cannot believe my eyes. What does it mean?"

"I am the nurse in charge of this ward, Carl," and her self-possession returned. "The French wounded have all been removed. There was not time to take these poor fellows. They are all your countrymen—and were prisoners."

"I see!" he cried, beaming upon her. "You bravely stayed to nurse them? Ah! I love you for it, my cousin!"

"I am of the Red Cross service," she told him.

"Red Cross? Of the German——?"

"French. But I came from America to help."

His expression of countenance changed. "Not to help these accursed French?" he growled.

"Why not? It is a work of mercy," she said coolly.

"Ah, I see. You could not get to Germany."

"I was not sure that I wished to help Germany," she said quietly. "This work was thrust upon me," and she motioned to the wounded men on the cots, "because I could speak their language."

"What do I hear you say?" cried Carl Baum. "Your heart does not bleed for your country——?"

Her head came up and her eyes flashed as she interrupted him:

"No more my country than France is my country!"

"Ach! these accursed Americans! Are all Germans in those States outlaws?" cried the young man, his wrath rekindled. "Well? What is it?" for Jacob stood at his elbow.

"The Fräulein is German," the old man said with confidence. "She has been the angel of the ward. Some of us would have died without her care and would never have struck another blow for the Fatherland. Think of this, sir. She remained when all the others deserted us and the shells began to fall."

He turned swiftly to the listening ward:

"Ist es nicht wahr, meine Kinder?" and the answering cry was chorused from every cot: "Yah! Yah!"

The girl beamed upon her grizzled champion.

"Carl," she said to her angry cousin, "we must not quarrel. The whole world sees not as you do."

"But it should," grumbled the young man. "What am I to tell the Herr Lieutenant? I was sent to seize this station. Our own wounded will be brought in. We have the detested French on the run at last. The Herr Doktor will soon take charge here."

"I will report to him," said Belinda calmly. "And will be glad to continue to assist as I may. My ward is in good order, he will find. We need supplies and—I am afraid my little helper, the infirmier as they call him, Erard, has run away. Be kind to him if you find him, Carl."

"That is true, Corporal. He is a good little man," said Jacob. "And he can make soup."

"Gott! is that a recommendation to mercy?" and for the first time the young man laughed.

He was, after all, only a rosy-faced youth, Belinda thought.

"Attend to Ernest, please, Jacob," she said with confidence. "I will talk to my cousin."

"Cousin 'Linda," murmured Carl, with growing comprehension as he gazed upon her, "what a beauty you've grown to be! The photograph you sent us doesn't begin to do you justice."

"You flatter me, Carl," she said, surprising herself by her casual tone and manner. Yet her heart beat heavily in her bosom. The prospect before her seemed dark.

"Wait till Paul Genau sees you," continued Carl. "He always has raved over you. But then—he does over every pretty girl he meets. He did over some of those Belgian girls last year—and they were cows," added Carl frankly.

"Paul is well, then?" Belinda interrupted him to ask.

"He is sergeant-major of our company. No end of a swell, too. And clever! Oh, yes, Paul is clever! We must give him credit for that."

Carl, she could see, was the same thoughtless, kindly, rather "chuckled-headed" lad she had known of old. She was thinking quickly, for she knew her position might be made or marred by small things.

"Can you see Paul before reporting to your Herr Lieutenant, Carl?" she asked. "You see, if both of you speak well of me the over-officers will be more likely to consider me safe. I would not like to desert these poor fellows now."

"Yes, I'll find Paul," promised the good-natured young corporal. "And he's smart. He'll know just what we must say."

He waved his hand and strode out of the door. Belinda put a hand to her heart as though to still its throbbing and sat down suddenly. She heard Carl set a sentinel at her door. She felt herself to be in some personal peril, yet of what nature she scarcely knew.

CHAPTER XVI

A THREATENING SITUATION

"Fret not thyself, Fräulein," Jacob said, with tenderness, patting her shoulder. "These are thine own people. If Germany is stern to her enemies, she is generous to her friends."

And Belinda wondered! She had listened to the patriotic speeches of the wounded Frenchmen for months. She had considered herself almost wholly French. She had scarcely endured, because it was her duty, these wounded Germans.

But they were her mother's people. She remembered clearly her visits to Germany and how kind her cousins—these two boys, Carl Baum and Paul Genau—had been to her. They had half quarreled over her at her last visit, indeed, being at that age when boys are apt to be much "taken" with pretty cousins.

The family life of the Genaus and the Baums, as she had seen it, was ideal. They were quiet, humdrum, peaceable folk, possessing all the sturdy virtues of the Teutonic race. Who would have thought that when next she should meet her two playmates they would be in the habiliments of war?

She waited in some perturbation of mind for what should next befall her. She was actually glad that her personal possessions had been left in old Minerva's cottage. There was nothing belonging to her here at the hospital, she told herself, to arouse suspicion.

But she forgot one thing—one very important thing.

She heard footsteps without once more. The sentinel grounded arms. In came a young man, smiling, handsome in a keen-featured way, and brisk. Carl was behind him.

Belinda would not have known her cousin, Paul Genau, he had so changed. Unlike Carl, his military service—both before and since the beginning of the war—had vastly altered him. He was plainly one of those young Germans who ape the junker class—who absorb and seemingly thrive upon Prussian militarism.

"By the great god Thor!" ejaculated this breezy young sergeant-major. "It surely is! I believed Carl here had quite lost his wits—I did upon my life, Cousin. Welcome to Germany, dear Belinda!"

He caught her unexpectedly in his arms and imprinted a kiss upon her cheek before she could defend herself.

"Hold on!" growled Carl from the background. "That is an unfair advantage. 'Linda is my cousin as well as yours—and she did not welcome me so."

"Nor did she invite her Cousin Paul to welcome her so warmly!" exclaimed Belinda, freeing herself quickly. "Your ear shall ring, Paul, if you do that again."

The sergeant-major laughed easily.

"Never wait to ask a pretty girl for such favors, my Carl. I have told you so before. You are too slow. 'When the orchard fruit hangs ripe over the hedge, pluck it and go thy way.' It is a good motto."

"No more of your mottoes, Paul," Belinda said with some sharpness. She was suddenly doubtful of this cousin, if not of the other. "Has Carl told you the position I am in?"

"Verily. So you have been aiding your French cousins? One of them—Leon Mandeville—is in one of our prison camps."

"Poor Leon!" sighed Belinda.

"And serves him right," growled Carl stoutly.

"Worry not, sweet Cousin. His whole nation will soon be in like condition."

"Yes," said the girl. "I see you call this Germany."

"We will never give up these provinces, once belonging to France," Paul returned quickly. "You see, we advance. Well! We will not quarrel, sweet Cousin. I will inform the Herr Lieutenant—the captain himself if need be—of our relationship. They know me," said Paul proudly.

"You are doing a noble work, Cousin Belinda. These are all Germans, you say? Are you sure?"

He asked the question keenly, glancing about the ward.

"You would better question them," said Belinda with scorn.

"Oh, the Herr Doktor will do that—without a doubt. He will arrive soon. And he is a great man, indeed! But I will report," he added, swinging on his heel. "You may as well come, too, Carl. I don't wish to give you any advantage with our cousin.

"You are very charming, Belinda. And I am considered a judge of the charms of pretty fräuleins."

"Is it so, Paul?" she retorted. "I see you are a very forward boy. You have yet to learn your place. Carl," she added, smiling at his rather downcast face, "will you do something for me?"

"A thousand, Cousin!" he cried, his stolid countenance beaming again.

"Find my little infirmier, Erard. He speaks enough German to make himself understood. You must be kind to him."

"He will be questioned by the Herr Lieutenant," promised Paul, laughing.

"So I shall be, I presume," the nurse said coolly. "But one may easily see the poor little lame man, Erard, is quite harmless."

"We have heard of these harmless people before," said Paul. "Well, we shall see."

"I will find him, Cousin 'Linda," promised Carl, following his cousin, the sergeant-major, out of the ward.

She was not disturbed thereafter for some time. Occasionally she went to the door and saw the German wounded streaming in, some afoot, but most of them borne on stretchers. She saw none of the hospital attendants to speak to at first. The sentinel at the door of her ward naturally kept the nurses away.

Erard appeared with the evening's supply of soup. A German soldier came to help carry the heavy pot. The little Frenchman gestured to Belinda to say nothing until the other had gone. Then he thrust a scrap of paper into her hand. On this twist was written:

"This is your man. He seems a harmless creature as you say. Say that your name is 'Genau'. I have so told the Herr Lieutenant. Your father's name is too French.—Thine ever, Paul."

The note made her indignant. Evidently Paul Genau had usurped the errand she had confided to Carl and with his power as a higher "non-com" had "set his cousin down a peg." She determined to punish the young sergeant-major for that in time. "He always was a crowing little bantam," she told herself indignantly.

Then she marked the remainder of Paul's note. Deny her name? The thought shocked her. "Genau" was truly her name, too—she had been baptised "Belinda Genau" to please her mother's fancy. Yet it seemed to the girl that she would be denying herself—denying the principles and beliefs she held.

Still there might be sound sense in Paul's advice. And how could she really escape this small masquerade? He had thrust it upon her!

She was much disturbed and was not at all sure of her course when a very gorgeous lieutenant came later to visit her ward. He ordered the sentinel on duty at the door relieved and walked through the ward, talking with the nurse for the most part, rather than looking at the patients or questioning them. Naturally the latter duty fell to the members of the Medical Staff.

"The Herr Doktor will do all that, Fräulein," the lieutenant said, laughing. "You may have a bad quarter of an hour with him, if all is not right. Believe me, Fräulein, I would not wish to cause so charming a lady any trouble. Fare thee well, Fräulein Genau."

Belinda knew after this interview whose manner her Cousin Paul aped. The young Lieutenant Graf von Harden was not a handsome man; but he evidently held a very high opinion of himself and was used to adulation.

The lamps were lit in the ward. She had watched several of the other huts filled with wounded. Wards I and II had most of the serious cases. The stretcher-bearers continued to come in. The surgeons were at work in the operating ward, as the French surgeons had worked there a few days before.

Save in the change of language spoken, the work of the hospital station went on much as it had before. But she saw all new faces. Few had spoken to her. There were not many women nurses, and all whom she saw were busy. From one she learned the Herr Doktor in charge was about to arrive, and she watched for him.

Suddenly there was increased bustle of attendants and soldiers at the gate in the hedge. She heard a powerful motor-car stop before the entrance. A tall figure in a helmet and long black cape and carrying a walking-stick came through the gateway.

"The Herr Doktor," was the murmur Belinda heard.

He strode down the yard. All the afternoon the hurrying stretcher-bearers had turned aside for that supine figure lying on the ground—the body of the good physician who had governed the hospital under the French régime. The advancing Prussian officer halted beside it.

"What is that?" he asked, turning the body half over with his cane. He saw the cross and military insignia upon the dead man's breast. "Ha! Chief of the Medical Staff, eh? Well, let him not lie here. Bury the dog."

He marched on, passing Belinda's door without a glance. The girl had shrunk back, hiding herself within the ward. She was trembling and afraid. Fear laid hold upon her—such fear as she had not experienced since entering upon her work on the battlefields. For it was, in large part, that uncanny shrinking of the soul she had been wont to feel in the New York hospital. And it was from the same cause.

The grim, helmeted figure that stalked down the yard, the chief of this German hospital unit, was Doctor Franz Herschall!

CHAPTER XVII

EXCITEMENT ENOUGH

It had seemed to Belinda Melnotte as though she were only marking time during these retrograde movements of the French forces and the advance of the German line. But to Frank Sanderson every hour had been filled with excitement.

Not so full that he had not thought of her. Whatever may have been the obstacle in the young aviator's life that caused Belinda pain and mortification of spirit because of her own weakness, Frank did not allow any impediment to balk his tender thoughts of the Red Cross nurse.

She was ever in his mind, especially as his work during these terrible days brought him into such deadly and almost hourly peril. As he had uttered Belinda's name when his Nieuport was dashed earthward on the first day of this battle that still raged between the armies, so thought of her was present with him all the time. It seemed to the young man as though her spirit hovered about him as he soared upward in his aeroplane to hang over the line of battle. He felt that she must be thinking of him!

Despite her seeming coldness when he had walked from the town to old Minerva's cottage the night before the battle, he believed that Belinda Melnotte felt more interest in him than for some reason she was willing to betray.

He remembered those pregnant moments aboard the Belle o' Perth when the submarine had been about to attack. A girl surely would not "make believe" at such a time!

It was true Frank Sanderson's interest in women and his knowledge of them was limited; but he was sure he knew Belinda Melnotte's nature. Hers was too sturdy and direct a character to be merely coquettish.

"And great heavens!" cried the aviator, "what kind of girl could she be to flirt at such a time as that? We expected to be blown up by that submarine. No. She gave me a little glimpse of her real feelings then. She actually warmed toward me. And that time in Paris, too—in the little café. We were real friends then. But now! now, she seems utterly cold!

"Can it be, after all, that the black-looking doctor has some hold upon her? Some engagement made when she was too young to realize what she was doing—or, at least, one that she now regrets? Does he stand between us?"

The thought disturbed him vastly. Yet he could not allow such meditations to get between him and his work. The flying game is too exacting for the pilot of a battleplane to allow his attention to be divided.

As Belinda was told, during the confusion of the hospital's evacuation the squadron of American flying men had made a splendid record in the action. One pilot had been lost with his machine. But it was not Frank Sanderson. It was the latter, however, who earned the title of "ace" in the earlier days of the battle.

His own Nieuport was pretty well riddled in his exploits, and he was forced to accept the loan of another aeroplane or remain idle while his machine was undergoing repairs.

Idleness, while his brother aviators were in the air, was farthest from Frank Sanderson's desire. Although the slight wounds he had received on the first day of the general engagement made him both stiff and sore, he was quite able to pilot a machine. And there was something of importance in the wind—a bold strategy—in which he desired to have a part.

The aviation camps were moved back. There were engagements every day between the French and German aircrafts. The first air attack by the Lafayette Escadrille and the other squadrons of the French Flying Corps here in the field had stirred up a veritable hornet's nest along the sector.

It had become a duel between the flying men of the two armies. At dawn, or before, the battleplanes mounted into the air behind the lines, and attack and counter-attack was the order during most of the day. There was usually a breathing space at noon, or thereabout, for the remous are more frequent then, and no aviator cares to manipulate an aircraft in attack while these "holes in the air" are present.

When the retreat had begun Frank Sanderson had been personally unable to look for Belinda. He was told the members of the Red Cross unit had all escaped from the hospital in which she worked, save the médecin chef himself, who had lingered behind to be killed by a shell.

The French retreat was, however, suddenly halted. A corps of Petain's "iron men" reinforced the broken but sullen ranks of the first-line fighters. These veterans stemmed the tide of Germans. Neither steel nor lead, gas nor liquid fire, could make these Verdun heroes give way before the hated enemy. The two lines were deadlocked on the front of this sector while the French and British, on either flank, slowly advanced to crush the German hordes.

Such strategy, however, was quite unseen by the ordinary fighting men. Even from the altitude scaled by the airmen the wisdom and the farsight of commanders were not understood.

Like the veriest private in the ranks, the aviators obeyed orders—nothing more. Frank Sanderson went up with his squadron and "did his bit" as best he could.

It was in a raid upon the German captive balloons—the first successful attack ever made upon the "saucisses"—that the young American aviator took a special part and in which he won honor.

Against the monster balloons aeroplanes had heretofore been all but powerless. Their machine guns fired bullets which, even if incendiary, were too small to set on fire the gas-containing envelope. The aircraft cannon carried by the larger French machines, too, had proved useless. The holes their projectiles made in the balloons were too small to allow a sufficient quantity of air to enter and cause an inflammable mixture.

But now a new invention was tried—four rockets mounted on either side of an aeroplane; and Sanderson's machine was one of those chosen for the experiment.

The head of the rocket was a dart, resembling a salmon-gaff, while the tail of the rocket was wound into a spiral spring, set in a socket. The Nieuport was stripped of all equipment save the pilot's seat, and Sanderson mounted with the dozen other "sausage-fighters."

The attack was made just at sunrise, for if it were possible to destroy the German captive balloons an important movement of the French troops could be made without the enemy observing the action in time to ward off a flank attack.

The several balloons had been apportioned to the aviators armed as was Frank Sanderson's aeroplane. These specially ordered appareils de chasse were surrounded by the full strength of the combined squadrons of battleplanes.

Sanderson mounted to a two-thousand-foot level only, for the tethered balloons were only half as high. Moreover, the air in this stratum was perfectly "solid." From this level, then, he aimed his machine.

Shrapnel from the German anti-aircraft guns burst about him; but he awaited calmly the signal from the captain of the squadron.

This waiting, when at any moment a stray bullet might damage his propeller or ignite his gasoline tank, was not an easy experience. The young aviator's mind was keenly alert to the work before him. But he thought, too, of personal matters. Particularly of the girl with whom he had crossed the ocean and on whom he had centered the most serious interest of his young manhood.

This train of thought did not run to "if I see Belinda again"; but was "when I see Belinda again." For Frank Sanderson was, if nothing else, optimistic.

The signal came. He tested his controls, and then darted on a long slant at the monster balloon which was his object of attack. There was no hesitancy or uncertainty in this dive.

Like a great dragonfly dipping over a still pond, he darted toward his prey. At the moment the shrapnel bullets were thickest about his machine, he touched the switch that released the eight rockets.

A sheet of flame hid his machine for a moment, and a spray of sparks spread out, following the flight of the incendiary missiles. The darts were well aimed; probably all of them found their billets in the huge bag of the balloon.

The "saucisse" sagged. Flames crept slowly around the silken envelope. The little Nieuport darted away while the observation balloon burst and fell to the ground with its unfortunate human burden, a mass of flames.

Within an hour seven great balloons were thus destroyed by the French aviators, and then the others were withdrawn from service for the day. The Germans marched on across the fields that had heretofore rung to the tread of French-shod feet; but their line of observation was broken.

Frank Sanderson returned from the successful raid for some small repairs and to have his mitrailleuse again affixed upon the nose of the aeroplane. There was much freedom allowed in the camp of the Lafayette Escadrille, or else the visitor Frank found waiting for him had a deal of influence with the military authorities.

"Captain Dexter!" Sanderson exclaimed, seeing trouble in the Yankee shipmaster's face the moment he removed his cap and mask, "what is the matter?"

"Belinda!" ejaculated the captain. "Have you seen the girl? Where is she?"

"Isn't she with the hospital unit?"

"No. I've been there. Moved heaven and earth to get a permit to come up here the moment we heard the hospital station was changed. Her aunt insisted. And Belinda isn't there!"

"You—you——Are you sure?" stammered Sanderson.

"Ain't I tellin' you? She isn't there. She never got away from the other station. And that's clean behind the German lines now!"

CHAPTER XVIII

PERILS INCREASE

Jacob, Belinda's self-appointed helper, aroused the girl from the spell of fear under which she had fallen at sight of Doctor Herschall.

"Poor Ernest is suffering greatly, Fräulein," he said. "These boys! They should be at home with their mothers. It matters not so much that war takes us old fellows. It is crueler to the young."

The girl, recalled to her duty, hurried to the side of the lad. Ernest was not a patient youth. His disregard of her orders had brought on this attack of pneumonia that the doctor had now successfully combatted.

He was querulous and by his exactions made it difficult for the nurse to attend properly the other serious cases left in her charge. It was not in Belinda's nature to be unkind, or even brusque. She could only be patient and faithful.

Meanwhile she sensed rather than saw the neatly fitted cog-wheels of the Prussian system begin to revolve in this newly established station of its hospital service—and revolve without a hitch. Discipline was the keynote and within an hour of the Herr Doktor's arrival one would scarcely have believed this was but a recently occupied base.

The Red Cross is the Red Cross everywhere; but in Germany at the present time it is almost entirely merged in the military branch of the government.

On Belinda Melnotte's part it took at first much fortitude for her to go about her usual tasks. The presence of Doctor Herschall at this hospital seemed almost unbelievable; though from Sue Blaine's letter she knew he must be somewhere on the battle front.

She well knew the opinions of the Herr Doktor, for he had expressed them time and again within her hearing. He had been a student at Bonn in his youth and was a Prussian by birth. His belief in the military destiny of the Prussian Government was not to be shaken. That he had remained in America so long after the war was begun was a mystery to all those who knew him well.

During the ten years he had resided in the United States, Doctor Herschall had made no attempt to associate himself with America or American interests. His affiliations were entirely German and he scoffed at any advancement in science or any discovery in his own profession, that did not have its birth in the German universities.

How much she had been influenced to take up this Red Cross work by her antipathy for Doctor Herschall and a desire to escape his attentions, Belinda had scarcely known; but now she would have given anything had the ocean again separated the Herr Doktor and herself.

How she wished she had retired with the French nurses and other attendants. For it did not seem—now—so necessary that she should have run into this unforeseen danger by attending these "Boches."

She used the accustomed scornful phrase in her thought, yet with a qualm of conscience. These Germans were not "a stupid and brutal people." They had once been as near to her and as dear to her as her father's nation. If her mother had lived until she was grown to young womanhood, and had been to her the companion and friend her father had been, Belinda might have been pro-German—might not have had her thoughts and sympathies drawn so strongly to the French.

A man nurse, a strong, capable fellow, appeared to relieve her rather late in the evening. She had been assigned a cot in one of the empty wards, where she slept with other women attendants. They accepted her as German like themselves, but from another hospital unit. It was too late and all were too weary for Belinda to be troubled by any cross-examination.

She knew when she awoke on the morrow she would awake to the danger of a general inspection of the wards which the Herr Doktor would probably undertake. Because of Paul Genau's advice—his insistence, indeed—her full name had not been recorded with the Military Head.

Had it been possible for Belinda Melnotte to escape from the hospital enclosure on this morning, she certainly would have deserted her ward and tried to get through the lines into territory held by the French.

The point of the wedge driven by the German advance into the yielding French lines she was told was far beyond the town. Many non-combatants had been caught by the swift advance and were being sent to the rear by the Germans. Some—those who would be a burden to the conquerors—were weeded out and allowed to escape to the French lines; and Belinda might have been fortunate enough to be one of these.

However, with two sentinels standing at the gateway of the hospital enclosure and nobody allowed to go out without a permit save the stretcher-bearers, what chance had she? Perforce she was held to her service.

She did not see Paul Genau that day or the following. But Carl was at her beck and call at almost any time. He was stationed with a detachment of privates to guard the hospital. His regiment was scattered along the roads hereabout guarding lines of communication and the supply trains that rumbled past.

"Thank you, Cousin Carl," she said, when he had done some friendly act for her. "You are a comfort."

"Say!" gasped the enamored Carl, "I'd be glad to serve you at all times, Cousin 'Linda. You are the nicest girl I ever knew. If this war were only over——"

"Well, what if it were?" she asked, rather amused by his seriousness.

"Ach! I'd marry you, 'Linda," he cried, with perfect frankness.

"Silly!" scoffed Belinda. "I'll be a sister to you. That is the best I can do."

"I don't want any more sisters; I have enough of them already," grumbled Carl. "You know what Mena and Louisa are, 'Linda. They would try the temper of any man."

"How do you know I would not be a greater trial?" she asked him, much amused.

"I have asked these wounded what sort you are," Carl replied simply. "They tell me you are uniformly kind. That you were just as kind to the French sick as you were to them."

"Praise indeed!" murmured Belinda. She was touched by this evidence of the faithfulness of these men who had been prisoners.

"Anyhow," Carl continued, "Paul Genau says you are fair game. He swears he means to win you."

"Oh, indeed!" ejaculated Belinda hotly.

"Don't blame me, 'Linda," urged Carl. "I only repeat his own expression."

"And you evidently think me 'fair game,' too."

"Oh, I am in love with you, Cousin," declared Carl boldly. "Paul is never in love—not really—with anybody but himself."

Belinda made no audible comment upon this statement, but to herself she admitted Carl Baum was an apt reader of Paul's character.

There were other matters that caused her much more anxiety just then than Carl's boyish protestations of admiration. The flying machines of all kinds remained very active above this part of the field. Daily there were battles in the air—often several engagements between sunrise and dark. While at night the anti-aircraft guns, flare-bombs, and searchlights betrayed the fact that the French were making frequent raids into the territory occupied by the German forces.

She saw the successful attack upon the German observation balloons; but of course she did not know what part Sanderson had in the raid. Her thoughts were, however, upon him almost continually. She wondered if he had learned that she was within the enemy's lines; and, if so, what he thought about her and if he considered her peril.

Her expectation of the appearance of Doctor Herschall in her ward was likewise nerve-racking. A medical examiner came each morning to look at her patients and examine her charts. She had of course written these up in German instead of in French, and this physician had commended her work warmly.

"You are a credit to the profession, Nurse Genau," he said.

So the name she had acknowledged by Paul's advice had spread among the hospital attachés. But what would the Herr Doktor say when he met and recognized her?

These personal trials rather tempered the threatening perils of the battle that raged almost at the door of the hospital. The German commander suddenly discovered that his advance wedge was being squeezed from both sides by the unexpected weight of the enemy's reserves. Reinforcements were brought up with promptness; but the German advance was halted.

The guns thundered continually. The hospital lay about in the middle of the widest part of the wedge and so escaped the French shells. But bomb-dropping from the French air machines had become a nightly terror.

To the north of the hospital, and several miles away, was a small wood. In some way it had escaped utter annihilation, perhaps because it was too open to offer cover for either infantry or a battery.

Toward evening, when Belinda was outside for a breath of air, she, with others, saw a most exciting duel in the air just above this grove of trees. First of all a small aeroplane was observed coming swiftly out of the north. There had been no action in that direction during the day, and this machine was alone.

"Ach!" said Carl, who was near his cousin, "that fellow is a spy. It is a spy-plane. You can see he has been carrying one of his accursed comrades into our territory for spy-work and is now returning alone."

"Are you sure it is a French plane?"

"Absolutely. See! He is chased." Then: "Ach! our flyingmen never fail!"

A second aeroplane was shooting down from a greater height, close upon the trail of the Nieuport. The two aviators circled so low above the treetops that the spectators could plainly observe the duel.

Belinda shuddered.

The German airman pointed his craft once, and then again, to bring his fixed machine-gun to bear upon the French aeroplane; but either the latter managed better and escaped, or the German's gun was clogged. At least the latter did not bring his antagonist down at once.

Suddenly the watchers gasped in unison—a smothered cry of horror. The swiftly darting aeroplanes, half circling each other, seemed drawn together by the suction of their propellers. They entangled, pitched downward, and plunged through the broken treetops, out of sight.

"Oh! The poor things! The poor things!" groaned Belinda, covering her eyes.

Carl removed his cap. "A hero—that," he said. "Ach, he did not fail!"

The horrified girl could appreciate little of the heroism of either aviator. The awful incident depressed her anew. She could not sleep for hours that night for thought of it.

Suppose one of the aviators was Frank Sanderson? He must be daily suffering just such deadly peril in the air. Her heart ached and she rose to another day's work in the hospital, heavy-eyed and despairing.

By order of the visiting doctor several semi-convalescents were removed from her ward that morning. They all seemed grieved to part with her—these men whom she had so shrunk from nursing in the first place. It touched the girl.

Other wounded were being brought into the station all the time and the other wards were filling up. Soon the stretcher-bearers were directed to her ward with an unconscious burden.

"Badly bruised, but otherwise only a broken shoulder, Nurse," one informed Belinda. "They put him under ether to set the bone. A brave fellow, this. They found him in the wood yonder—the hero of that air fight last night."

"Impossible!" gasped the nurse. "They must have both been killed. I saw them fall. Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes, Fräulein. He is a fliegender Mann—they stripped the uniform from him when he was brought in."

The bearers did not see the girl's face as they lifted the hero from the stretcher to the clean cot. She gazed with both amazement and horror at his countenance. It was masked in a fortnight's growth of beard—a reddish whisker—and the inflamed welt of a bullet marred one cheek. His rather long hair was tossed back from his brow. Just at the roots of it was a sharply defined scar—the mark of a not long-healed wound.

She was left alone beside the cot as the bearers clumped out in their heavy boots. Enthralled, Belinda continued to gaze upon the features which, disguised as they were, she could not fail to recognize.

Behind her Jacob called softly:

"Fräulein! Fräulein! the Herr Doktor Herschall approaches to inspect the ward."

CHAPTER XIX

OVER THE ENEMY'S LINES AT NIGHT

The report Captain Raphael Dexter brought Sanderson, that Belinda was missing from the hospital unit, at first benumbed the young aviator's mind. He could scarcely believe it; yet the Yankee shipmaster's insistence could not be denied.

Frank finally was assured that the captain had undoubtedly obtained correct information. The tragedy was a fact.

For tragic the happening was, Sanderson had every reason to believe. A girl left behind in the abandoned hospital station at the mercy of the Prussians! Tales of their treatment of helpless women were not unsubstantiated.

The horror and despair that seized upon the aviator shook Captain Dexter.

"By Hannah, boy! don't take on so," he, alone with Frank in his quarters, urged. "I didn't suspect that there was so much betwixt you and the girl."

"There isn't," Sanderson declared. "There's nothing between us. But I love her, Captain Dexter," and the confession was wrung from the young man in his agony of spirit. "It's my misfortune, too, to be tangled up in a way that ought to keep me from asking her even to think of me."

"Do tell!" murmured Captain Dexter anxiously. "Mixed up with another woman, are you? By Hannah! I wouldn't have thought it."

Frank did not hear this. His mind was fixed upon Belinda and her peril.

"We must do something," he said, recovering in a measure his calmness. "Her position as a Red Cross nurse should assist her. There must be some way of communicating with her—some means of inquiry."

"By Hannah! I'm not goin' back to that aunt of hers without knowin' what's become of the girl. Let me tell you, that Mam'selle Roberta isn't the woman for a man to try to bamfoozle. She's as sharp as can be. By Hannah! I wouldn't darest go back to Paris without takin' Belinda with me or knowin' that she was all right and safe."

Frank Sanderson's anxiety, based on something deeper than this, led him to "raise heaven and earth," as Captain Dexter suggested, to obtain news of the missing nurse. Although communication, even official communication, between the opposing armies is more infrequent in this war than in any other modern struggle, through influence at the army corps headquarters and because of his record and that he was an American, rules were set aside and a direct request for information regarding Belinda was made to the German staff commander.

Several days elapsed before the reply reached Sanderson and Captain Dexter, and this reply was both discouraging and terrifying to the two Americans. No nurse or other person by the name of Melnotte had been found at the abandoned French hospital station when it was taken over for the German army. Nor was there any record of a person by that name found within the district.

"Something has happened to her—something serious," the young aviator said. "I am sorry she ever came over here. She had no right to risk her life on these battlefields."

"Perhaps she had more right than you have to risk yours," the captain interposed, sharply scrutinizing his young friend's countenance. "At least, she is independent in her domestic relations. She has nobody nearer to her than Mam'selle Roberta."

"But to throw herself away for strangers! They are not even her own people, these French."

"You are doing your bit for them, just the same," Captain Dexter again reminded him.

"Ah, my case is different," Sanderson declared. "I felt that some of us Americans should do something for France—if only in gratitude. And why not I?"

"And why not Belinda?" returned the old shipmaster with sadness. "Ah, my boy, this enthusiasm and recklessness—it burns up youth! Better we old fellows to give our lives than the young. But, by Hannah!" he added, with disgust, "they refuse to use us. Want to put us on the shelf. Lay us by in drydock. Why, my three darters——"

"I know, Captain," interrupted Sanderson, foreseeing a long monologue if once the Yankee shipmaster got well into this theme. "But what can we do about finding Miss Melnotte?"

Every time they came around to that question it looked like facing a blank wall. Belinda was inside the enemy's lines—where and in what circumstances they could not imagine. They were not even sure that she still lived.

Nor was Sanderson's anxiety for Belinda the greater because he remained idle or took no chances himself during these stormy days. No twenty-four hours passed in which he did not flirt with death.

While the Nieuport he was using was being repaired, he requested work in the bombarding squadron and sailed back of the enemy's lines on two nights for the purpose of cutting railroad communication to the German front.

With their usual thoroughness and efficiency the enemy was thrusting a railroad line along the wedge they had driven into the French front. They assumed that they had gained another bit of France and would remain fixed there.

On the first night the bombardment was unsuccessful. Sanderson had been on several such errands before, but usually as a pilot of a guarding battleplane. The actual dropping of the bombs became his duty on this occasion, and likewise upon the following night.

He left Captain Dexter fuming and fussing at the aviation quarters because he could not go with the flying squadron. The shipmaster had actually learned a good bit about aviation and only his age kept him from volunteering for work at the front as a pilot.

Indeed, his age had not deterred him from volunteering, only it had caused the authorities to refuse his services. When Mademoiselle Roberta Melnotte heard of his attempt to enlist in the Flying Corps she was vastly perturbed. She was almost ready to put on her hat and rush to the authorities to oppose his enlistment, believing that he surely would be accepted.

"He is a so-brave man, that Monsieur le Capitaine Dexter," she explained to a friend in the American embassy. "He has the spirit of a boy. He has already learned—ma foi!—to pilot an aeroplane. Next, I suppose, he will seek to be commander of a submarine. He declares he did not promise his three daughters, Mesdames Prudence, Patience and Penelope, not to sail either in the air or beneath the sea."

Captain Dexter had presented two fully equipped aeroplanes to the Lafayette Escadrille, and they would soon be shipped to the front. Frank Sanderson was to pilot one of them when it arrived. He was now, however, engaged with the bombarding unit and was bomb-dropper on a machine the night that the attack upon the railroad line behind the German battlefront was successful.

A man named Lefevre, an American, was with Sanderson and drove the airplane. They got a flash signal from the captain of the squadron about two o'clock in the morning that the railroad line had been found.

Having been flying high, they descended quickly, and, the night being dark with a haze overhead that quite hid the stars, the pilot had to depend almost entirely upon the indicating barometer for a knowledge of their height above the ground.

"We're getting close to it, Lefevre, I believe," Sanderson urged. "I've the feel of the ground in me. This wind has blown over a swamp—I can smell it."

"Must be we're in a hollow between hills, then," rejoined the pilot. "Look at the barom," and he flashed a tiny spark of light upon the face of the altimetre.

"Go easy, then——"

At the moment there spread a sudden rosy glow directly below them. Both aviators thought they were over an exploding shell, although the vicinity had seemed altogether quiet.

There followed no explosion and the light winked out immediately. The roaring motor of the aeroplane drowned ordinary sounds, but Sanderson made his solution of the mystery plain to his mate.

"It's below us—the railroad bed. That's a locomotive. The fireman opened the draft and the flames shot out of the stack. Quick! We'll have to risk it! I'll put a bomb down that stack, if I have luck."

The aeroplane swooped. The bark of an anti-aircraft gun sounded above the noise of their motor. The train was an armored troop train bound for the front and the motor of the swooping aeroplane had been heard.

The flash of the shot, however, gave the pilot the course of the train. "The gun, Sandy!" shouted Lefevre. "I got a flash at the road. It's straight. We can rake every car. Surer than the bombs."

The advice seemed good. The explosions of the German gun fixed on the roof of a forward car was a decided help to the attacking airplane. Lefevre drove only a few yards above the ground and parallel with the flying train. The aviators were taking a great risk, for a pole or other obstruction might wreck them at any moment. But the opportunity to do serious damage to the enemy was not to be neglected. Sanderson turned the crank of the mitrailleuse, raking the train from the rear car to the locomotive as their aeroplane passed.

The rain of bullets did fearful havoc, even destroying the gun-crew on the car-roof, the Americans being untouched. But the train rolled on and the machine gun fouled.

Lefevre had driven so swiftly that they were now up with the locomotive. Unhooking his belt, Sanderson threw himself to the end of the seat nearest the thundering train, and with his automatic pistol shot both the engineer and the fireman, as well as the armed guard on the tender-tank.

The train ran wild as the airplane soared upward again. A few hundred yards further on there was a sharp curve in the road and Lefevre had caught sight of it in time by the dim beam of the locomotive headlight. The locomotive and every car left the rails at that curve and piled up in the ditch.

The horror of this wreck, the effect of their bombardment, shook Frank Sanderson more than he would have been willing to own.

This was war, and he had volunteered for just such work. But it was the first time he had ever seen such a holocaust.

As they mounted higher in the aeroplane he saw flames leaping from the wreck. The loss of life would be fearful. He sickened at the thought of how this incident and others like it were multiplied every day along the battlefront.

Their work was not done for the night, although they were headed south once more. Until the last bomb they carried was dropped Lefevre did not rise to a proper height for rapid flying.

They had lost the other members of the squadron while chasing the troop train, and winged their way back alone over the German lines, flying so high at last that, in the gray dawn, they were not seen by the watchful German airmen.

As they neared their camp and Lefevre was about to spiral down for the landing, Sanderson looked out to see if everything was in good order. He was amazed to glimpse an object caught in the running-gear of the airplane.

At first he could not imagine what it was. Then, with a shock that chilled the blood in his veins, he saw that it was an unexploded bomb.

Unreleased before the aeroplane descended, in all likelihood there would be nothing to mark their landing place but a deep crater in the earth.

The situation appalled him. Already the aircraft was descending. Not only their own lives, but those of others, would be sacrificed if the bomb exploded when they landed.

CHAPTER XX

THE DUEL

Every time Frank Sanderson soared upward in an aeroplane he fully realized that danger rode with him. That was why he was so successful as a pilot. The "ace" is not the man who refuses to recognize the imminent peril of his calling. Sanderson merely did not allow this knowledge, this realization of danger, to influence him in the performance of his duty.

Besides, the young American possessed a quick mind. In connection with his work as an aviator his brain was always alert. He was ready for anything at any time.

This accident, however, was entirely outside the realm of the usual perils of his calling. The unreleased bomb, entangled in the wires of the airplane's chassis, offered a problem that even Sanderson's brain could not instantly solve.

The machine was but a few hundred feet above the ground. Below was the French aviation camp. In a few moments, if Lefevre proceeded, they would make their landing—and then——

Sanderson tapped the pilot on the shoulder. "Wait!" he shouted. "Take a sweep around before you land. There's something we must do first."

"What's that?" demanded Lefevre.

The aeroplane was shooting along on a level again before Sanderson ventured to tell him. The pilot was quite as cool an airman as Sanderson himself, but he, too, was startled.

"Good-night!" he ejaculated. "A bomb caught? Who ever heard the like of that? Why—Sandy!—we're up in the air for good!"

"Looks so," agreed Sanderson, jerking it out, "unless we can make our landing on a nice, soft cloud."

"Humph! And they'll have hard work serving us breakfast up here."

"Quite so, old scout," declared Sanderson. He felt easier now that Lefevre was taking it calmly.

"Well," the latter added, "my will's in father's safe. Willy may have my skates and my red mittens. By Jove, Sandy, it'll be some finish!"

"Not our finish," declared Sanderson vigorously. He thought of Belinda. If she had fallen a victim to the Prussians he would not have cared much what became of him; but he was optimistic enough to believe that both Belinda and he would finally escape from their perils.

"What shall we do?" staccatoed Lefevre.

"Be Flying Dutchmen, and roam about the air forever more," suggested Frank.

"Like Noah's first dove—not finding any rest for the soles of our feet. But our gas is going to give out some time, if nothing else."

"Our patience is going to give out first," declared Frank.

These opinions had been shouted, of course, for the roaring of the motor and the wind whining through the stays of the aeroplane made an ordinary tone of conversation impossible.

"See here!" exclaimed Lefevre at last. "Isn't there anything you can reach it with and unhook the bomb?"

"Of course. Mother's clothes pole. Wait till I get it," scoffed Sanderson. "And if it could be unhooked, what then? It wouldn't do a bit of good down yonder," and he gestured toward the aviation camp in plain view. "Dropping bombs on one's own camp isn't done, you know, Lefevre—it really isn't done!"

"No. Quite true," and the pilot nodded. "But what——"

"Just one thing to do. Hold steady and don't rock the boat. I'm going over the side, Captain," and Sanderson unhooked his belt.

"Great heavens, Sandy! You can never do that!" yelled the pilot.

"Don't—tell—me—what—I—can't—do," was the reply as the young American clambered out on the wing.

Lefevre almost held his breath. He dared not look around again. To climb down and unhook the bomb was like mounting to the main truck of a ship in the teeth of a hurricane.

From the wing Sanderson swung himself down upon the running-gear. He held on with one hand and carefully loosed the bomb. To drop it might cause disaster below. He had, therefore, to climb back to his seat with the explosive projectile, which was a greater task than getting down into the chassis, for he had to hang on literally with one hand and his teeth.

But he did it! He came in safely to his seat in the rocking aeroplane and again Lefevre spiraled earthward. As they drifted over a hollow in the hillside beyond the camp, Sanderson dropped the bomb where it would do no harm as it exploded.

"Some boy!" was Lefevre's only comment when they landed. Nor did either of the young men talk much about the adventure. There are too many hair's-breadth escapes in flying for one peril to be marked much above another.

From Captain Dexter, Sanderson heard that the army corps headquarters had again sent out feelers to learn, if possible, Belinda Melnotte's fate. On his own part the shipmaster had communicated with the American embassy in Paris, and efforts would be made through friendly sources at Berlin to trace the lost Red Cross nurse.

Diplomatic relations had been recently broken between the United States and the German Government and the two countries, it was believed, were verging toward war. The threat of unrestricted U-boat warfare had roused a fever of indignation in America. Germany might intern any and all Americans found within her lines—Red Cross workers not excepted. Her friends, however, desired to be assured of Belinda's safety, if nothing more.

"I'm havin' the devil's own time, and that's a fact, stavin' off Mam'selle Roberta's inquiries," Captain Dexter declared. "I write such poor French and she such poor English that it gives me a chance to dodge a lot of her questions. But, by Hannah! she isn't goin' to be fended off for long, boy. You can bet your last dollar on that."

Sanderson went back to piloting his repaired Nieuport within a day or two after the successful bombarding of the railroad, and almost his first assignment was to transport a man for reconnaissance to a certain point behind the enemy's lines. He had done such work before, and with success, recovering his man at the place and time appointed.

He was returning from dropping the spy, without rising very high, for he was above the wedge in the battlefront, and the danger point was several miles ahead—or so he thought.

His intention was to pass over the locality of the hospital station where Belinda had served before the retreat of the French.

Not that he could hope to see her or learn anything about her while crossing this territory. That was too great a miracle to expect. He knew the Germans held all this land now. Indeed, he could glance down and see the supply trains and marching columns on their way to the front. He was so much interested in what went on below, in fact, that he forgot to keep a sharp outlook for what might be in the air.

It was an unpardonable error. He had swooped to a level little more than five hundred feet above the earth. He knew the country thoroughly and saw that the grove of open timber ahead was the small wood which stood to the northeast of the hospital station.

He meant to ride over it, swoop low over the abandoned station to see what was going on there, and then rise a couple of thousand feet before risking the passing of the battleline.

On his mission to leave the spy he had been relieved of his mitrailleuse, for the Nieuport was not supposed to carry more than two hundred and twenty pounds, and his passenger, Renaud, was a heavy man. Therefore his only weapon at the moment was the automatic pistol strapped at his side.

Suddenly the pop of a machine gun warned him of danger. It was not an anti-aircraft gun shooting from the earth, but a weapon being used above him! The bullets hailed all around his airplane.

Sanderson speeded up his motor before even looking to see whence the bullets came. He hated to run away as much as would any man; but he was not armed for a pitched battle with a German aviator.

The pursuer was swooping with determination. As Sanderson shot toward the grove of timber he realized that the enemy was coming down upon him so swiftly and with such recklessness that collision was almost inevitable, unless he mounted higher and at once.

The German was evidently willing to accept death himself if he could but bring the American to earth.

The rain of bullets soon ceased, but Sanderson realized that his propeller was riddled as though by a hailstorm. He felt a smart along one cheek, where a bullet had plowed, and there were innumerable shot holes in the wings of his biplane.

He started to mount. The shadow of the enemy aeroplane fell across his own. It was near sunset, and the shadow was huge. It was as though he were being smothered by a giant blanket dropping from the skies.

Sanderson was inured to peril, but he suddenly felt that he was in a very serious situation. A minute more and his course on earth, as well as in the air, might be run. His brain worked alertly. He used a trick he had learned and practised often while over the aviation field on Long Island.

Raising the nose of the Nieuport, he began to climb sharply, intending to loop the loop and so, if possible, pass over his enemy.

The German was right at hand. The two aeroplanes passed each other like veritable coursers of the air—the one soaring upward, the other swooping downward. Sanderson and his enemy opened fire simultaneously with their pistols.

What damage, if any, he did the German aviator the American did not know, but before he had accomplished the upward curve of his loop he saw that a bullet had punctured his gasoline tank.

Flames burst forth, fanned by the swift passage of the air. Sanderson righted his machine quickly. He knew he would be grille, as the French flying men call it, before he could arrive at any safe anchorage.

Shifting the nose of his airplane swiftly, Sanderson plunged directly upon the German, who, likewise, had changed his course. The two machines rushed together at frightful speed—a speed of nearly two hundred miles an hour.

No wonder the spectators in the hospital enclosure, of whom Belinda Melnotte was one, cried out in their horror as they beheld this duel to the death.

Sanderson whispered the name of the girl who was, by chance, watching him. Perhaps a woman's name was on the German aviator's lips. But neither man faltered.

The two machines interlocked and fell through the treetops. Sanderson kept his head, although expecting an instant and awful death. He unhooked his belt and was flung from his seat into the top of a low, well-branched evergreen. It was his salvation.

The wreck of the two aeroplanes reached the ground, his brave antagonist in the midst of the ruin. Flames sprang up and threatened to destroy the wreckage at once.

Wounded and bruised as he was, Sanderson hurried to reach the ground. He hoped to save the German aviator; but when he drew the man out of reach of the flames he was dead.

Night had fallen. No searchers came to the spot. Sanderson, far from friends and in the enemy's country, realized that he was in serious danger. In spite of a shoulder that pained him frightfully and his many bruises, he managed to disrobe, strip the dead man, and garb himself in the German's uniform. Then, with horror at the necessity for the act, he thrust the dead body and his own garments into the burning wreck of the two aeroplanes.

He could not travel. Indeed, it would aid him not at all to leave the vicinity of the fallen machines, for he could not pass the enemy's lines even in the borrowed uniform.

He sank, in the darkness, upon a bed of leaves. He had but a dim remembrance of that night, or of being found in the morning by the searchers and his transportation in the ambulance to the hospital station.

When he really awoke it was to a belief that he was again in the hospital back in New York. He opened his eyes to see the Herr Doktor Franz Herschall standing beside him and Belinda Melnotte leaning solicitously over his cot, saying in German:

"Doctor, here is one who has just been brought in. A very brave man, they say. He fell last night in a duel in which he destroyed his antagonist, a French flying-man."

CHAPTER XXI

ACROSS BURNING SANDS

When one has long expected a certain disaster, even though it be one that can be averted by no act of the victim, a reprieve can scarcely be a greater relief than the shock of another, and utterly unexpected, catastrophe.

Belinda, day after day, had looked forward to the fatal moment when Doctor Herschall should stalk into her ward and discover with his piercing black eyes that "Nurse Genau" was Belinda Melnotte, who he must certainly know had left New York to be a Red Cross nurse in France.

At the alarm from the watchful Jacob that the Herr Doktor approached, the girl discovered that the long-expected peril was dwarfed by danger that threatened from another point.

The unconscious man on the cot, the wounded aviator just brought into the ward, was Frank Sanderson.

Belinda's thoughts fastened to this amazing discovery, and much that it might portend of peril to them both flashed through her mind.

She was not stunned, but was keenly alert in every sense. It impressed her instantly that she alone could shield Sanderson from discovery.

For recognition by Doctor Herschall would bring disaster to the young American aviator. He had been found within the enemy's lines and in German uniform. The ignoble death of a spy could scarcely fail to be his portion if his identity was revealed to the Germans.

The thought of Sanderson's plight dwarfed the sense of her own danger. Here approached—even now he was entering the door—the surgeon who had treated the aviator in the New York hospital eight months before. Belinda hoped that Doctor Herschall would not recognize the unconscious airman.

"Is this hope based upon a foundation of sand?" she asked herself.

Sanderson had been clean-shaven when Doctor Herschall had treated him. With this ragged growth of beard he scarcely looked the same, save to such eyes as Belinda possessed. For hers was the gaze inspired by love.

She had to admit this now. The shock of seeing him lying so wan and ill forced the acknowledgment of her love to the surface of the girl's mind. Whether he was deserving or not, Frank Sanderson had conquered her affection to the very last barrier.

He was in peril—dire peril. She was inspired to fight for his salvation with all the wisdom and all the art at her disposal.

She brushed a lock of his long hair over the old scar on his brow and turned swiftly to meet the black-browed surgeon.

The latter looked much the same as he had the day he arrived at the hospital station and had so brutally ordered the burial of the kindly médecin chef, its former head.

The military carriage of the Herr Doktor had always been marked. Now, with the helmet and long cloak he wore, and his stern air, he might have been an army corps commander instead of merely a medical officer.

Belinda could not show fear of him at this crisis. All her loathing of the man and of his gallantries for her rose in her mind, but she trampled these thoughts down. She hoped to save Frank Sanderson. She must save him!

She met the Herr Doktor at the head of the ward, and not even Jacob suspected that the pulse of fear beat in her throat. Belinda looked straight into the black, beady eyes of the great surgeon, and raising her pink-tipped finger placed it on her lips to enjoin silence.

As though a man like Franz Herschall ever could be startled!

He bowed formally before her, his eyes glittering, and asked in his peculiarly harsh voice:

"Are you, Nurse Genau, in charge of this ward, Fräulein?"

"Yes, Doctor," she managed to say calmly.

"I have a report on Case Seventeen. That case should go back to the operating table."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Well!" ejaculated Doctor Herschall. "Lead on. Let me see him."

Not a word or look betrayed his recognition of her. Belinda's fears were a veritable whirlpool in her mind. What was his determination? How would he treat her in the future? Her brain revolved these questions until she was dizzy; but she turned and led the way down the ward.

The Herr Doktor glanced keenly at the patients as he passed. One took the opportunity of begging for something for which he had already asked the visiting physicians and had been refused.

"Who am I to tell you offhand what you may eat?" barked Doctor Herschall. "For all I know of your case you may eat Schwarzsauer und Kartoffel klösz. It is the visiting physician who knows your case. Be still."

The man sank back cringing like a whipped dog. Belinda's limbs trembled. She had often heard him speak in the same harsh tone in the New York hospital, but it shocked her now as though she heard it for the first time.

"He is a beast!" she thought.

And seeing the still form of Frank Sanderson at the bottom of the ward she renewed her secret determination to save the American aviator from "the beast."

The surgeon halted beside Number Seventeen and examined him with his quick, sure touch. The wonderfully supple fingers seemed to have retained all their skill. The man tried to tell the doctor something.

"Be still!" commanded the Prussian. "Do you suppose you can tell me anything about your case that I do not already know? Dummkopf!"

His diametrically opposed statements regarding these two cases merely displayed the bullying, dogmatic mind of the man. Belinda had often observed it before, and scorned Doctor Herschall for it. The Prussian ego was as hateful in her eyes now as ever.

"Soh!" he said to her suddenly, in English and speaking so that nobody but the girl herself could hear. "I find you here, Miss Belinda? What does it mean—this masquerade? Surely you are not fool enough to be a secret agent for the French?"

Fortunately his tone and words angered her, and in her wrath she found strength to face him. She ceased to tremble, and in brief, brusque sentences explained how she came to be in her present equivocal situation.

"Hum! I see," he muttered. "I recognized your handwriting on the chart of this case, which the doctor brought me," Doctor Herschall said with a careless gesture toward Number Seventeen. He neglected to state that the inquiry from the French corps commander for news of Mademoiselle Melnotte, referred to his attention, had already aroused his curiosity and suspicion.

"I had seen your writing too many times before," pursued the surgeon, eying Belinda with narrowing gaze, "to be mistaken, despite the difference in the writing of English and German. Oh, yes, I should know your chirography under any circumstances, Miss Belinda. The vision of—hum!—admiration is never blinded. Hum! So you were left behind when the crazy French retreated? And you have two young cousins to defend you—no?"

"Yes," she said doubtfully.

He flashed another of his penetrating sidewise glances at her half-averted face. She saw his hands working in that spasmodic way of his—the long, sinister fingers which she had watched perform such surgical marvels. But she would not shudder, not even when he added:

"Well, let us see if these cousins can save you when trouble arises, Fräulein. You have laid your intentions open to serious question by giving the military authorities but part of your name. Unwise—unwise. But fear not because of me, my dear Fräulein," he added in German. "I am your friend."

"Now let us look at the rest of these wounded," he pursued roughly, passing on to Number Nineteen.

He was approaching the aviator. Belinda, now a step behind the surgeon, watched Sanderson's face with anxious eyes.

Was there a change coming into the pallid, bearded countenance? Could it be possible that Doctor Herschall would recognize the aviator in his present guise?

Sanderson's lips trembled. Color was rising in his cheeks. The anxious girl knew what the change meant.

Suppose, in the moment of coming back to consciousness, the aviator should cry out—should speak in English—should utter something in the surgeon's hearing that would betray his identity?

The girl hurried forward. As Sanderson's eyes opened with that look of perplexity in them that is usually their expression when the patient comes out of syncope, Belinda was saying in German:

"Doctor, here is one who has just been brought in—an aviator. He fell last night in a duel, in which he destroyed a French flying-man and his machine."

"Hum! Indeed? I heard of that," the Herr Doktor said, showing some interest. "One of my assistants set his shoulder. Hum! As long as he goes on all right he'll not need my attention."

He moved on carelessly. Sanderson, recovering his senses slowly, began to realize where he was.

Inside the enemy's lines! In a German field hospital! He, flying and fighting for France, was in the power of the Germans! Then over his awakening mind came the remembrance of what had brought him here.

His fight in the air with the aviator. When found he had been garbed in the dead German's uniform. They had picked him up for a wounded hero of their own race and brought him here. And—startling him into complete appreciation of his situation—Belinda Melnotte was in attendance!

He half raised on his good elbow and watched her with the Herr Doktor returning slowly up the ward. Belinda! Doctor Herschall, the black-browed surgeon from the hospital in New York! Both in this field station of the German hospital corps.

Sanderson could not understand it. The mystery was too much for his weakened mind and he fell back with a groan.

"Brother, are you in pain? Can I help you?"

The bearded, ugly face of Jacob bent above him. Frank suddenly shook with weak laughter.

"The man who kept the delicatessen store on the East Side," he murmured.

"Ach Himmel!" gasped Jacob. "How did you know, mein Herr? Who told you?"

Fortunately Sanderson had spoken in German. His wits came to his rescue.

"It is common property, old man," he said. "They told me I should be nursed in this ward by a man who owned a delicatessen business in New York. Is it not so?"

Jacob wagged his head. "Ach; it is a wonder how gossip gets around this hospital," he grumbled.

Sanderson lay silent but wakeful. Indeed, now that he had come completely to himself and the ether fumes were out of his brain he suffered too much pain in his broken shoulder to sleep. And his mind was very active.

What troubled him the most was the association of Belinda and the Prussian surgeon in this field hospital. It was a mystery that fed his old jealousy of the Herr Doktor.

Just now his peril, as an enemy found in disguise within the German lines, did not greatly oppress him. There was something in connection with his situation, however, that keenly stabbed his mind and was uppermost in it when Belinda returned.

He saw her coming down the ward. The light in her eyes could be for nobody but him—the trembling smile upon her sweet lips drove all jealous thoughts away. She could not have turned from the surgeon to him with this look on her face if her affection was given to the black-browed Prussian.

"Frank!" she breathed, kneeling quickly beside him that her lips might be close to his ear. She took his good hand in her own. The aviator's heart was for the moment too full for him to utter an intelligible word, but his eyes spoke his thoughts.

"Frank," she went on, "I must not be caught speaking to you—especially in English. You can only be one of my Verwundete, my poor boy! Oh, if you had been killed! And I watched you fall without knowing!" She tried to turn her eyes away, but his gaze held her.

"Belinda!"

"Hush! I must appear German. So must you. My cousins, Carl and Paul, are here. They have saved me from any questioning thus far. But now that Doctor Herschall knows——"

"Is his presence here a surprise to you likewise?" Sanderson managed to ask.

"Yes. Although I knew he had left the hospital in New York. But his appearance here amazed me——"

She was about to add "frightened me"; then she felt that Sanderson should not be needlessly alarmed. And the Herr Doktor had promised to say nothing. Sanderson's thought had leaped to another topic, and one that had before smote upon his mind. Belinda suddenly whispered:

"Oh, Frank, you are in such great danger here! How shall I get you away from these Germans?"

"Listen! Never mind me at present, Belinda. I am safe for a while at least. But there is another who is not—who is in deadly and hourly peril because of my accident."

"Who?" she asked in surprise.

"I left him—when was it? Yesterday afternoon? I was to meet him at a certain place at daybreak to-morrow morning. The spot is all of twenty kilometres from here. He must be warned. He will have to make his way as best he can through the German lines and to the French forces. But if he waits for me he is sure to be caught."

"A spy?" she gasped.

"Yes. Renaud. A really wonderful man, for years a detective of the metropolitan police—one of the shrewdest they say in Paris. He would be a distinct and an irreparable loss to the French cause. He must be warned, Belinda! He must be warned!"

CHAPTER XXII

LOVE AT WAR

Without a pang—without the first compunction of conscience—Belinda had shown the wounded aviator her heart. Nor had he accepted the revelation with any question.

This was no time for qualm or quibble. They had come to a vital grip with a horrid and scarcely-to-be-averted peril.

Sanderson flung to the winds the caution and hesitancy that had marked his attitude in the first of his intercourse with Belinda. Now he even ignored his brother Jim's advice.

Upon Belinda's part there was no question as to whether the aviator was deserving or not. She loved him. Therefore she must save him.

"How can we get word to this Renaud?" the nurse asked softly, her glowing eyes devouring the face of the aviator.

"Oh, Belinda! how lovely you are!" he whispered. Then: "Isn't there a faithful Frenchman left about the place? Were you alone of all the old corps of attachés abandoned when the Germans advanced?"

"My little infirmier would not desert me. They have made a cook of him—these Germans."

"The man with the lame foot and the harelip?"

"Erard. Yes."

"Send him to me. Some way must be found to save Renaud."

"But you will be risking your own safety," she warned him. "Oh, Frank, I am at my wits' end to think how to get you free."

"Never mind me, Belinda," he said. "Renaud comes first. He will carry important papers and much information of value to the French commander."

"But—but," stammered the girl, "this is only to help the French. And you risk your safety. You are an American, Frank!"

"That I am an American makes it all the more necessary that I should help France," he whispered. "My heavens, girl! didn't we both come over here for that purpose? At any rate I feel myself to be one of those Americans who are helping uphold the hands of France while my people are awakening to the peril of an autocracy that menaces the world. No, Belinda, I must do my part though the heavens fall!" and once more the old-time smile overspread his countenance and mirth again danced in his eyes.

"Oh, Frank——"

She was forced to leave him suddenly, for there was a call for her at the other end of the ward. Their conference had been brief but illuminating.

As the aviator turned his head on the pillow he saw fixed upon him a pair of hungry eyes from a cot across the aisle. The face was emaciated, and a silky yellow fuzz of whisker the patient wore betrayed his youth.

This was Ernest, Belinda's single unruly patient. Frank was conscious that this youth fixed him with an attention that seemed almost uncanny. Had the American, easily wearied in his weakened state, not dropped asleep almost immediately he might have been made anxious by the glare of the young German.

Meanwhile Belinda looked for somebody to carry a request to Erard. Courteously as she had been thus far treated by the Germans, she had noted even her Cousin Carl's evident determination to give little Erard and herself small opportunity for private conversation.

It was possibly not founded upon any suspicion of herself, but the infirmier was a Frenchman and had been an attendant at the station under the former administration. The Prussian military mind overlooks nothing. The lame man might have been left behind to spy upon the conquerors.

Erard was used to helping Belinda when she did dressings of importance, and if she insisted they sent him to her, as Jacob could not do everything. She asked a passing private to send her Corporal Baum, her cousin; but Sergeant-major Genau appeared instead.

"How now, Cousin Belinda?" he greeted her gaily. "It strikes me that I have not seen you for some time and that Carl is getting an advantage over me. It will never do—never do at all! I'll never allow another man—let alone a dumme Esel—get the inside track of me with any pretty Fräulein."

"I wish you would stop your nonsense, Paul," returned the girl scornfully. "Will you never grow up?"

"Indeed, ancient dame? So you look upon me as unfledged, do you? Carl is that."

"And you are quite as bad—quite," she declared. "Remember, at least, that we are cousins. If these others hear you flout me so they can have no respect for me. Your comrades, I mean."

"Ach! you wrong me, sweet Cousin."

"No more, Paul. Find me my little infirmier, Erard. I must have somebody who knows how to assist at a dressing. You are wasting my time."

"Ah, Belinda, why are you so cross?" cried the sergeant-major, with a pleading note in his voice. "Why so harsh with one who admires you so?"

"Tut, tut, Paul! Save your love making for village maidens," Belinda told him tartly. "Nor are we rehearsing a scene from a comic opera. This is serious business, this hospital work——"

"And I'd have you know," said Paul with sudden fierceness, "that I am serious, too, Cousin Belinda. I presume that Schafskopf, Carl Baum, has poisoned your mind against me. The scum! I hate a backbiting dog. You surely cannot let any person like him form your opinion of a man like me."

"Certainly not, Paul. I am forming my own opinion of you right now—as you talk. Go find Erard. Do not delay," she said sternly, "or I shall be forced to appeal to your Herr Lieutenant."

"Tausend Teufel! and what if I told him you were a Melnotte instead of a Genau?" hissed the suddenly enraged sergeant-major, his choler rising.

Belinda was just now menaced by greater peril (or so she thought) than any with which this angry boy could threaten her. She retorted sharply:

"And so put yourself, too, under the lash? I have the writing in which you advised me to make the change in my name. Forget not that, mein Knabe."

He tramped away angrily enough, but Erard soon came limping up the yard to the door of Belinda's ward.

The nurse stood in the open doorway that she might be sure nobody within or without would overhear her first words to the Frenchman.

"Erard! Stoop down and fix your shoe. There is something the matter with it."

"Oui, oui, Mademoiselle! Ça y est! What is it?" and he stooped without a glance or start of surprise and fumbled with his shoestring.

"The aviator who was brought in this morning—who fell last night in the grove yonder. You know?"

"Oui, Mademoiselle. I saw the fight. Glorious!" he murmured.

"He is not German," whispered Belinda. "It is the German who died."

"Nom de Dieu! Is this one then the French brave?"

"American. You saw him when he visited the hospital before—with the old sea captain."

"Oui! Your young man, Mademoiselle," he said, simply. "I quite remember. Good! We will save him from les Boches."

"It is more than that, Erard," she told him softly. "We have to save another man—a spy. Monsieur Sanderson left him at a place—he will tell you. To-morrow morning Monsieur Renaud will be waiting the return of the airplane."

"Monsieur Renaud?" repeated Erard. His face suddenly expressed some emotion that Belinda could not understand. "The great Renaud of the detective police?"

"I believe so. He must be warned. It is most important that he should get through the German lines as soon as possible."

"For France!" gasped Erard, suddenly drawing himself erect.

"For France," repeated Belinda softly. "Now you will help me. I shall be called away while we are with Monsieur Sanderson. He will then tell you all. Be circumspect."

"Oui! For France," agreed the infirmier. Then, in a lower tone unheard by the nurse: "Le bas Renaud!"

Erard assisted at the important dressing, as was his custom. Really, he acted as orderly while Jacob performed some of the duties of infirmier.

Sanderson's shoulder was immovable in plaster. There really was nothing of consequence to be done for him; but the nurse ordered Erard to bathe him while she went about other duties.

Erard set up the screen and brought the water grumblingly. Oh, Erard was a good actor!

Sanderson had awakened from his sleep refreshed and buoyantly hopeful. Naturally of a sanguine temperament, the American was inspired by Belinda's present attitude toward him with roseate visions upon other subjects. He believed Erard patriotic and trustworthy, as well as shrewd.

The lame man's, "Oh, yes, Monsieur! I can escape from the enclosure and return drunk in the morning. It is not an uncommon practice and will yield me but a six-day march perhaps up and down the yard here between the huts," wholly satisfied the aviator.

Whispering in French they made final arrangements and Frank trusted the little man with the password that should identify him to Renaud.

At the other end of the ward Belinda busied herself with little duties which enabled her still to see that nobody approached the screen about Sanderson's cot. Ernest was restless and got half out of bed before the nurse swooped down on him like a hawk.

"You are getting very lively indeed, my boy," she told him. "I shall speak to the doctor about you. You would better be in some convalescent hospital, where you will be made to knit or to roll bandages until you are fit to go back to the trenches."

Ernest showed his teeth.

"There are ways of escaping the trenches, Nurse," he declared. "Am I a dog?"

"An ungrateful boy, at least," she returned sharply.

The man on the next cot admonished the troublesome one. "The least you can do is to be quiet when the good Fräulein has so much to do," and Ernest subsided, muttering.

The incident, small in itself and seemingly unimportant compared with the greater things that troubled her, remained in her thought. It was as though, in passing along a rocky way, a serpent had coiled and struck at her. Ernest's nature was treacherous; she felt it.

Carl Baum, relieved of duty, put his head in at the door. His face was flushed and his eyes angry.

"Do you want me now, Cousin 'Linda?" he asked.

"'Now'?" she repeated, forgetting at first that she had sent for him.

"Ach, that Paul Genau! Der schlaue Fuchs gets the better of me always. He heard the man ask where I was and he comes first, after shutting the messenger's mouth. But I heard of it and came as soon as I was off duty. When I next meet that Paul Genau——"

"Hush!" commanded Belinda. "Do not make a mountain of a molehill, Cousin Carl. I merely sent him on an errand."

"What right has he to run errands for you, Cousin 'Linda?" cried the excited young fellow. "Am I not your servant? I will not endure his interference. No!"

"But he is our cousin. You boys must not fight," Belinda said soothingly, yet suddenly feeling that this rivalry between her cousins was no longer a matter to laugh at. "Remember, you have your corporal's stripes to lose. And if Paul is such a sly fox as you say, he would put you in the wrong light if you attacked him. Besides, it is wrong to fight."

"Donnerwetter!" gasped Carl, suddenly bursting into laughter. "And here we are at war!" He recovered his temper quickly. "A small pot soon hot," his Cousin Paul called him. "Ah, but Cousin 'Linda, I am a jealous one."

"You should not be," she told him rather absently.

"Yes! But you do not tell me that you care for me at all."

"I care for you a great deal, Cousin Carl, but not in the foolish way you suggest."

"Foolish!"

"Yes. We are too much like brother and sister. I could not by any possibility love you in the way you suggest," she said with sudden frankness.

"Ach! that Paul——"

"Hush! I love him not at all," she cried. "He is simply my cousin—as you are."

"Ah, 'Linda," the boy pleaded, "take time to think of it. Of course, any day I may be shot——"

"God forbid, Carl!"

"Then you do care?"

"As your cousin—yes. As your sister, if you will have me——"

"That Paul!" he began again heatedly.

"You have heard me say it is not Paul," she declared.

He grasped at her unintended hint. His eyes actually clouded with mist. He said huskily:

"But there is somebody? You have a lover? Somebody you have long known? Somebody in America?"

She bowed her head in silent affirmation. But Carl suddenly propounded a question she had not expected:

"But if that's so, why did he let you come over here to work in this horrid war?"

"Suppose—suppose he came, too?" she said hastily, almost recklessly. "Suppose——"

"To fight for Germany?" gasped Carl. "And you were in a French hospital?"

"He is an American."

"Ach, those accursed Americans! Do they not all fight against us? If they dared they would go to war as a nation against us."

"Carl! you must not talk so. You offend me. I have confided in you and I expect you to treat my confidence as a gentleman should."

Erard brought away the screen and bucket from Sanderson's cot.

"No more now, dear Carl," she said hastily to the downcast young fellow. "Another time. And you will remain my friend, Cousin Carl?"

"Soh!" Carl blew a mighty sigh. "Well, as long as it is not Paul Genau!"

CHAPTER XXIII

BECLOUDED

Erard disappeared suddenly. Nobody saw him go, but he was not to be found.

Of course, it was his time for sleeping. His hours off duty were short enough at the best. Somebody had gone to his cot to call him and he was not there. The bed had not been slept in.

"Ach!" raved Corporal Baum. "What a pig it is! The crazy Frenchman is not to be trusted. And you said he was faithful."

He said this to Belinda just before she left her ward for the night.

"He has been faithful to me," she told him. "If he has made one misstep you must forgive him for my sake, Carl."

"Ach! The drillmaster's whip should feel his back. Now I have to detail one of my men to do his work."

"The night nurse is coming. See that you get a good man to help her."

Belinda went through the ward again to make sure all was right with each of her wounded for the night, and found opportunity of whispering to Frank, as she squeezed his hand under the blanket:

"'All quiet along the Potomac.' He's gone."

Carl had gone fuming back to his duty; but as Belinda came out into the chill dusk of the March evening a cloaked figure awaited her.

"Paul!" she ejaculated, rather startled.

"It's I. And waiting for a girl like any yokel," and he laughed bitterly—a laugh Belinda did not like to hear. It was so dark she could not see her cousin's face; but she felt that he looked at her strangely.

"I want you to walk with me, 'Linda," he said suddenly, coming closer to her. "I wish to talk with you."

"On what subject, Paul? And where shall we walk? I am tired now and am ready for my tea and bed. There are no 'lovers' lanes' or other romantic walks about here."

"You laugh at me!" he ejaculated fiercely. "Ach! when did I let a girl laugh at me before? I did the laughing."

"Possibly they all laughed at you," she said, much amused.

"Ach! I left some of them in tears."

"I shall not weep, Cousin Paul, if you leave me now and let me go to my waiting tea."

"You do not know what you are doing to me," he cried under his breath, seizing her arm roughly. "I tell you, Belinda, I never met a girl before who so moved me. I—I am a cold-heart. No woman before ever mastered me as you have."

"Pooh, Paul! you have been aping your betters—or think you have. You have thought it smart to go about making love to village flirts. I know your kind. You have never loved anybody."

"I tell you——"

"Be calm. You have never yet loved, I tell you; you have only played at love."

"I love you," he said doggedly, almost as his cousin, Carl, would have said it.

"You only think so," repeated Belinda. "You do not know yet what true love means."

He halted, seizing her arm again and looking at her suspiciously. "Do you?" he demanded.

"Yes," Belinda told him calmly, exultantly, her face raised to the darkening sky. "I love, and am loved in return, Paul. Your tawdry passion for every pretty face you see has nothing to do with love."

A heavy tread came close behind them. A harsh voice said:

"Nurse Genau, I require your presence in the operating ward—a serious case. I cannot trust these other women in anything so delicate."

Paul had sprung to attention. Belinda's manner changed suddenly. Her cousin noted it as she faltered:

"Very well, Herr Doktor."

Doctor Herschall gave the young man a harsh look as he strode past. Belinda hurried to get certain necessary articles. Paul muttered:

"Can it be that black-looking surgeon? Herr Gott! he spoke as though he owned her. He has spent years in New York, they say. Belinda was in a hospital there, she told me. Have they known each other before?

"Tausend Teufel! I believe the girl is in love with somebody. Certainly not with that blockhead, Baum. With whom, then? With the Herr Doktor? Ach! How foolish! One could not love the Herr Doktor more than one could a stick or a stone. It must be somebody else and"—he asked the same question Carl Baum had asked—"if she loves and is so beloved, why did he let her come over to France to do this dangerous work in the hospitals?"

Meanwhile Belinda had reached the receiving ward and was ready at the operating table when Doctor Herschall arrived. There were other surgeons to help him, for there was no rush of new cases at present; and there were other nurses, too, if he needed them. Belinda knew it was merely a crotchet upon the part of the Herr Doktor to demand her presence here—especially after her long day's work in her own ward.

It was to show his authority—his power—over her that he had done this. Or was it pique because he had seen her talking familiarly with her cousin?

In any case it was out of the question for her to object. She knew that well. It was in Franz Herschall's power to crush her utterly with a word.

And not so much for her own safety did Belinda Melnotte bear this hard duty with patience, but because of the young aviator lying helpless in her ward—the man she loved and the man she must aid to escape from the deadly peril that menaced him.

"Soh!" said Doctor Herschall with satisfaction, but speaking aside to the nurse, when he had performed another surgical miracle, "this is like many old occasions, Miss Belinda, is it not? Hum! I shall call on you frequently hereafter. These other nurses are cows! If you like you may give up your ward entirely. I can easily place another day nurse there."

"Oh, no, Doctor!" she begged hastily. "I prefer to be busy. And my wounded would miss me."

"What? Those beasts? They would miss their sausage and beer—nothing more," he answered in contempt.

Belinda was as wearied as usual that night; she slept, however, but little. How much had happened within twelve hours! Never in her life had she passed so exciting a day.

Threatened from all sides with a danger that might at any time become of deadly import, the Red Cross nurse had gone about her duties with an apparently unshaken demeanor. And yet she was no braver than the ordinary girl of her age and with her experience.

She remembered well one Red Cross nurse, martyred by the Prussians in Belgium, for just what she was doing—indeed, for less! A vile imprisonment, or the firing squad, might be just ahead of her.

Yet Belinda Melnotte glowed and was glad all through her being at the thought of Frank's presence near by and what they now were to each other!

She had utterly cast aside all her former doubts and prejudices. The love to which she had finally given speech crowded down the warning word of conscience.

No longer did Belinda Melnotte ask herself whether or no she was good in thought as well as act. She was a loving woman—loved and beloved! And nothing else in the world mattered.

She slept fitfully, but was up at dawn. During the night she had worried much about Erard.

Had he been able to travel as far as Sanderson said the rendezvous with Renaud was, and without being apprehended? And when would he return? If the man did not come back, how would they know if he met the French spy or if the latter was safe? All that forenoon she kept a watch upon the entrance gate of the hospital enclosure.

"The guardhouse for that harelipped rascal of yours when he does come," Carl Baum promised Belinda. "I cannot save him—nor can that sly fox, Paul Genau. If he is only sent back to a detention camp he will be lucky."

The nurse had but little opportunity to speak in private with Sanderson during the morning, for Jacob was her principal assistant. But their stolen glances told each other much.

There was a little bustle at the gate about noon. Belinda, watchful as ever, ran out of her ward.

Into the enclosure staggered the recreant Erard, a wine bottle in one hand and a dead pullet by the legs in the other. Ah, but he was the very picture of a devil-may-care fellow, roaring drunk!

Carl Baum made a rush for him, sputtering maledictions in German—threatening the little lame man with dire punishment.

"Hold!" commanded Erard pompously. "This," and he held up the scrawny pullet, "is for the Herr Lieutenant. Touch it at your peril!"

"Schweinhund!" thundered Carl.

"Who are you?" demanded Erard scornfully. "A soldier—therefore a slave. I am a free man. Vive la——" He tipped the bottle to his lips and swallowed some of the vin ordinaire. "Have a drink, brother?" he added, holding the bottle out to Carl with tipsy hospitality.

The corporal broke the bottle and seemed about to break the infirmier's head as well. Belinda ran out to save him. "You must not ill-treat the poor fellow, Carl," she declared.

"A wonderful tenderness you have for this drunken little beast," growled her cousin. "Come on! You go to the Herr Lieutenant," he added roughly to Erard.

"Oui, Monsieur! Here is the fine poulet for that same Herr Lieutenant." He bowed low before the troubled nurse. "But yes," he said boldly. "I am a man, me! I am no slave of a soldier. I have accomplished all that I set forth to do."

Belinda caught her breath. She knew the man was speaking directly to her—was reassuring her; although what he said seemed merely the vaporings of wine.

"Come!" cried Carl again.

"Pardon, Monsieur," said Erard politely. "Is that the way to leave a lady? I kiss your hand, Mademoiselle. I am relieved of that so-dirty work of the ward for a season—is it not?"

He spoke French. He bowed low before her and carried literally into action his words by raising her hand to his lips.

Swiftly he pressed a bit of paper between her fingers. She held it tightly—breathless, shaken—while Carl marched the staggering little man away.

She went slowly back to her ward. Secretly she looked at the tiny note. The envelope was of rice paper—two cigarette papers sealed together with green wax. It seemed to her as she examined it, that the seals had been tampered with; yet if so, the note had been reinclosed.

Within was written in pencil on a third paper folded so that it could not be read through the envelope, a single line in English:

"Trust not Rabbit-mouth too far."

It was a warning—a warning referring to Erard, but brought by the infirmier himself! Although it was not signed, the line must have been written by Renaud, the spy.

Erard had tried to read it, too. But Belinda was well aware the lame man could not read English. The mystery troubled her exceedingly.

Erard had met the spy and certainly must have told Renaud of Sanderson's plight. The spy's peril was imminent. His task of getting out of the enemy's country was enormous. And yet he considered it necessary to warn the American airman against trusting Erard too far!

CHAPTER XXIV

HER FEARS ARE SHARPENED

Most of the communications between Belinda and Frank Sanderson during this forenoon had been of the most casual kind—a glance, a whispered word, a sly pressure of the hand. But now she must give the strangely worded note, presumably from Monsieur Renaud, to the wounded aviator.

There were cases being removed from the ward each day and fresh ones being brought in; so the work of temperature taking, wound dressing, chart writing, and all the other routine duties, went on much as they had when Belinda's ward was part of a French field station.

She was fully as busy now as she ever had been, save that she did not have so many serious cases at one time as she had had when the great battle began in the winter. The Germans had brought another hospital unit into this field; and although the guns poured their iron hail into the lines of living men, day and night, this particular hospital unit to which Belinda was now attached was not over-worked.

The girl was being worn out, however, physically and mentally. After six months of work under the rules of the French Croix Rouge she had been entitled to a furlough, and Madame la Directrice had urged her to take it.

"One can never tell when one's chance may come again. Besides, it is a good rule to take all one is entitled to in this world—and a little bit more!"

Belinda now saw the wisdom in this very practical and particularly French observation. Two weeks in Paris with Aunt Roberta would have been heavenly! So the exhausted Red Cross nurse thought as she went about her duties on this day. And if she could only have Frank there, to nurse him properly!

She slipped the paper Erard had given her, with a whispered word, into Frank's hand. Then, at another time, there was opportunity to discuss it.

"Do you suppose it is from that Monsieur Renaud?" Belinda asked.

"Undoubtedly. It would be like him to use just such means of communication—to warn me against the very man who bore the note," Frank returned, chuckling. "Ah, Renaud is a sharp one."

"But to suggest poor Erard is not to be trusted!"

"Perhaps I understand better than you do. Do you know much about Erard? About what he was before the war?"

"Why—no. He has never been communicative. I do not know, even, that he has a family. I am sure he never receives mail. But I believe him to be utterly and abandonedly French. And how he does hate the Kaiser!" Belinda whispered.

"It may be. Even the joyeux of the Bataillon d'Afrique are good patriots—and, as the whole world knows, they are convicts," Sanderson told her.

"Renaud was attached in the days before the war to that section of the Paris police that has intimately to do with the apaches—the dwellers in that underworld of Paris that everybody writes about and so few really know anything about.

"Renaud became somewhat communicative with me. This was the third time I had taken him across the lines."

"But to accuse poor Erard!" protested Belinda, who felt personally hurt by the fling at her infirmier.

"The hero's coat is not always white," Sanderson reminded her. "At the last gasp it was the denizens of the Paris underworld that held back the Germans until the British could get over. Ordinary thieves, beggars, blackguards of every type, filled those thousands of taxis that were the last resort of the brave defenders of the city, when the government had already left. And they fought like rats in a pit, because they were rats—the gutter-rats of Paris—the apaches.

"It might be that our Erard may have had a much worse reputation before the war than he has gained here in this hospital."

"Oh, I cannot think of him so! He is so unselfish, so kind to me, so thoughtful."

"And who wouldn't be to you, sweet Belinda?" murmured Frank in English. "Who indeed could be unkind to you?"

There was no time to explain to Sanderson who might be—who was, indeed!—very unkind to her. Nor did she wish to worry him if she could help it about Doctor Herschall, save to warn him that if the surgeon came through the ward, to do nothing or say nothing to arouse suspicion in the Prussian's mind.

"Oh, I am German," the aviator told her, laughing lightly. "I learned that poor fellow's name by the light of the burning aeroplanes. So I am August Gessler—some Swiss blood in me supposedly, from the name I bear. Ah, we are both sailing under false colors, it seems, Nurse Genau."

But Belinda could not take the matter lightly.

Doctor Herschall showed the cloven hoof again that day. He sent for Belinda to come to the operating ward and kept her there for several hours to aid him in certain delicate operations. She really had very little to do but to hand him instruments and the like, as she was wont to do in the New York hospital.

Doctor Herschall gave her a shock—as he intended, of course—just before she went back to her hut.

"Hum! I was told you crossed on the Belle o' Perth, Miss Belinda," he said in English. "And Sanderson, who was attempting to fly and came to the hospital to be patched up, was in your party. Your little friend, Miss Blaine, told me," he added maliciously.

"Mr. Sanderson was aboard, yes," answered Belinda, secretly shrinking from him. "He was not of my party. Only Aunt Roberta traveled with me."

"Hum! What became of him? Did he attempt to join the French Flying Corps?"

"He told me in Paris," said the girl honestly, and in full command of herself now, "that he expected to go to an aviation school."

"Hum! Playing—playing. Always playing, these rich young Americans," said Doctor Herschall scornfully. "I do not presume even the inefficient French would trust a fellow like Sanderson with any real work over the lines. Hum!

"Now, there is that brave chap you have in your ward, Miss Belinda," he pursued. "Gessler is his name? Yes. August Gessler. I have looked up his record. One of our bravest airmen, with many adventures to his credit.

"How does he mend, Fräulein?" he asked her suddenly.

"Very well indeed, Doctor," replied Belinda composedly. The more anger she felt beneath the surface because of his slighting way of speaking about Frank Sanderson, the cooler she grew outwardly.

"Bring him along, Nurse—bring him along," urged the Herr Doktor. "He is needed. Those in high places have already inquired kindly for Herr Lieutenant Gessler. By the way, was he in uniform when he was brought to your ward?"

"No, sir," Belinda said distinctly. "I—I suppose his uniform must have been destroyed in the accident."

"Soh? Hum! I will make inquiries. There might be something of value belonging to the brave aviator at the spot where he fell with the Frenchman. Hum! Remind me, Nurse. I will have the matter looked into."

She fled from him then and reached her ward just as darkness was falling. With an effort she recovered her calm and walked down the aisle, speaking to each of her charges kindly—even to Ernest. The latter sulkily turned his back upon her and would not reply.

Kneeling swiftly beside Sanderson, she put her lips close to his ear.

"Frank! Frank! could there be anything left at the place where you fell with the German that could identify you?"

He asked no question, alert on the instant.

"I burned all my outer clothing; even my brass badge went into the fire. And, of course, I carried nothing in my pockets of an incriminating nature."

"All were burned?"

"I believe so. With the body of the poor German. Poor fellow. Hold on! Just one thing that might not be destroyed—melted down. My canteen."

"Oh!"

"My name is painted on it: 'Frank Sanderson—Pilote Aviateur.' If the fire was hot enough it would burn off the enamel."

He asked her why she was so suddenly anxious about this matter and she was obliged to tell him.

"Then this Herr Doktor is not your friend, but your enemy?" Sanderson asked.

"And your enemy," she was forced to say. "A deadly enemy if he learns who you are. Oh, Frank, this is a dreadful situation! A word from him and we are utterly lost."

Sanderson smiled grimly.

"And a word from your Cousin Carl, or your Cousin Paul, or from Erard, it seems, and we are lost. Pshaw! Let us not lose our courage. We are Americans, Belinda."

"Oh!" cried the Red Cross nurse under her breath, "I wish we were back in dear America again! I—I am frightened, Frank."

She had to leave him then. She feared some of the others had noted her special attentions to the wounded aviator. Jacob said:

"Ach, Fräulein, it warms my old heart to see your kindness to that brave man. He flies and fights for the Fatherland. He is worthy of any good woman's love."

"I am afraid you are an impudent old man, Jacob," she told him, yet smiling. "You are as bad as my cousins, Carl and Paul. They think of nothing but love making."

"Ach, diese Kinder! But, Love and War—they always go hand in hand."

Belinda must learn what had been done to Erard in way of punishment for his escapade before she sought her bed that night. Carl Baum was disgusted regarding the affair.

"What do you suppose the Herr Lieutenant did?" demanded the corporal of his cousin. "Der schlaue Fuchs recited the Marseillaise for the Herr Lieutenant and—Herr Gott!—with that harelip of his, it was the funniest thing I ever listened to," admitted Carl.

"He presented that ancient hen to the Herr Lieutenant, too. Then he danced—as he swore they do in the sewers and cesspools of Paris. Ach! that Erard of yours is a fine fellow. He knows all the thieves and blackguards in Paris, I have no doubt. You should see him act when he is drunk. The Herr Lieutenant laughed."

This report made Belinda very serious for more than one reason. What Sanderson had told her of Renaud's knowledge of the underworld characters of the French capital and this talk of Carl, seemed to dovetail to make the infirmier a very different person from what she had supposed Erard to be.

However, she felt it her duty to do what she could for him. She went to the Herr Lieutenant Count von Harden to beg the favor of Erard's release.

"And by my life, Fräulein!" declared the count, "I know not what to do with him unless it is to let you have him. He is no good as an ordinary prisoner to us, that is certain. He can neither dig nor fight.

"But he must not be allowed to escape again at night. I tell you! He shall be made to sleep in the guardhouse. He is not to be trusted to watch your ward. You may have him to assist you during the day. At night he must be a prisoner. But let him sleep off his potations now."

"Many thanks, gnädiger Herr," Belinda said.

"The pleasure is mine," the young nobleman replied, his mean little eyes devouring the figure of the nurse in her neat uniform.

She had come to his quarters outside the hospital enclosure with a permit from the Herr Doktor. The lieutenant had established himself royally in what had been the village inn, and because of his wealth and station had half a dozen orderlies and servants at his call.

"Is there nothing more I can do for you, my pretty Fräulein?" urged the lieutenant, rising to approach her. "Life is none too gay in this forlorn spot, but a bottle of good wine helps one to forget these horrors of war," and he laughed. "Have you supped, Mademoiselle?"

"Thank you sir," she said quietly. "We nurses are forbidden any gaiety while on duty."

"Soh? Even the French nurses?" he inquired slyly.

She laughed as lightly as she could under the circumstances. Yet she well understood that he hinted of secret information regarding her true identity. "I am scarcely French, Herr Lieutenant. I am of American birth and partly German ancestry. I could not sup with you in any case. The Herr Doktor would forbid it, I am sure."

"Poof! for the Herr Doktor," cried the lieutenant.

"Not so," and she laughed again, evading his out-stretched hand, while she approached the open door swiftly. "He knows where I am, for I had to state my desire to obtain permission to leave the hospital."

"Pshaw! these regulations are accursed," he cried. Then, glancing through the window: "It is quite dark, Mademoiselle. Let me escort you, at least." He seized his helmet and tossed his cloak over his shoulder.

"Oh, do not bother, pray, Herr Lieutenant!" she exclaimed.

"It is a pleasure, I assure you," he said, and tramped out of the room and down the echoing stairway after her.

Belinda felt like fleeing. But the way truly was dark, and if she ran she might anger the Herr Lieutenant. Also, how undignified to run through the deserted village with this tall Prussian officer in hot pursuit!

"Really, sir," she begged, turning toward him at the street door, "I wish you would let me go alone."

A dark figure stood at attention on the porch.

"Who have we here?" demanded Count von Harden coolly.

"Sergeant-major Genau, Excellency," announced the hoarse voice of Paul. "To attend the nurse to her quarters."

"Ah! The good Paul!" said the lieutenant, chuckling. "And dost thou so carefully watch over thy pretty cousin? Ach! perhaps it is as well. My service, Fräulein. Good-night."

CHAPTER XXV

PAUL IN THE WHIRLPOOL OF DOUBT

After Belinda's first astonishment at Paul Genau's timely appearance, she felt only gratitude for his presence.

"Ah, I am so glad you came as you did, Paul," she said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm.

She felt his arm tremble and knew that Genau had difficulty in speaking calmly.

"What—what did he want of you?"

"Why, I went there to ask——"

"I know what you went for," Paul interrupted. "Begging off that wretched Frenchman. I know that. But what did—did the Herr Lieutenant mean by wanting to escort you—and where?"

"Back to the hospital," said Belinda, answering his last question first. "You Germans seem to be obsessed by a desire to make love to me," she added scornfully.

Paul uttered an oath that made her cringe and drop his arm.

"Why should he try to smear you with his filth?" he exploded savagely. "He knows you are my cousin and under my protection. Schweinhund!"

"Hush! Somebody will overhear you, Paul."

"Yes! And then I will 'get mine,' eh? I know it," he snarled. "These officers—these dastardly nobles—demand everything of us—our women, too. I hate them!"

"And yet you fight for them?" she whispered, close to his ear.

"No! Gott! No! I fight for the Fatherland," declared Paul proudly. Then he suddenly drew her arm into his again, saying: "Pardon, Cousin. But keep away from the Herr Lieutenant's quarters. The fool thinks all is fish that swims near his net. When I learned where you had gone I hurried over to escort you. But there was another thing. I went into your ward to have a look at the wounded airman. The Herr Doktor takes an interest in him."

Belinda trembled suddenly, but she could not easily withdraw her arm now.

"Are you cold?" he asked her solicitously.

"I have thought it best to abandon my warm cape," she replied. "It has the French insignia on it."

"Demand a cloak of our quartermaster, Belinda." He swiftly unhooked the chain of his own enveloping cloak and wrapped it about her.

"Ah! How kind, Paul."

"Not so. But I would be kind to you, Belinda," he said quickly and earnestly. "It is for this I would warn you."

"Of what?" she asked.

"Of that flying-man, perhaps."

"Oh!"

"He was asleep when I went into the ward—Herr Lieutenant Gessler, as they call him. So I did not speak to him. But you have a boy across the aisle from the Herr Lieutenant—Ernest Spiegel."

"Yes?"

"That is a poison-tongue!" exclaimed Paul angrily. "I do not know whether to believe him or think him altogether a liar."

"What—what does he say?" asked Belinda. "He gives me much trouble. But, poor boy——"

"Waste no sympathy on him," growled Paul. "He is a treacherous little beast. Whether it be true or not——"

"Whether what be true, Paul?" demanded Belinda, unable to smother her impatience, and shaking his arm in the grip of both her hands. "Tell me! Is there something wrong? What has Ernest said to you?"

"That the flying-man talks other languages than German. That he speaks French to that harelipped Erard. That they have long conferences together."

"Why, how ridiculous!" Belinda said, as though relieved. "Of course the Herr Lieutenant speaks French. Does that make him a traitor to the country he flies for?"

"And that he speaks still another language to you," Paul went on doggedly. "That must be English. The boy has never heard it much before."

"Ah!"

"He says more, Cousin Belinda," the young man continued, and she knew he was watching her face keenly as they came under the radiance of the lantern at the gate of the hospital enclosure. "He says he remembers seeing in an old magazine since he has been in this hospital a picture of August Gessler, the flying-man; and that the Herr Lieutenant is a very different looking person from the man that photograph portrayed."

"Why——" Belinda could go no farther, neither in speech nor literally. She leaned so heavily on Paul's arm that he halted. But he did not aid her to recover her self-possession, saying hoarsely:

"The Herr Doktor has ordered me to send a squad to search the vicinity where the two airplanes fell, to recover anything of value belonging to the Herr Lieutenant."

"I know it, Paul!" she gasped. "He told me he would."

"Are you so in the Herr Doktor's confidence?" the young man demanded, both surprised and suspicious.

"He knew me in New York," the girl whispered. "In the hospital there."

"And has said nothing?"

"Hush! No. But he could ruin me—and you, too—with a word."

"Why doesn't he?" her cousin asked sternly.

"Oh, Paul! I seem to be bewitched. They all want to make love to me."

"The Herr Doktor?" he growled. "Herr Gott!"

"He is worse than any of you," she almost sobbed. "He haunted me at the hospital in New York. I was so glad to escape him when I got through there. And I confess one reason why I came to France was to escape Doctor Herschall's attentions. And here he is!"

"Ah!" said Paul morosely. "And this dog of a flying-man, Gessler. Has he fallen before you, too?"

"Hush, Paul! You make me feel horrid. Can I help it if all of you men are children? The wounded aviator is a gentleman. He does not offend me, at least."

"No?" and he watched her gloomily as they walked on.

Belinda was recovering from her sharper fear. Her brain began to consider this new peril.

"Who will go to search the place where the airmen fell, Paul?" she asked.

"Oh, I shall send a file of men with a corporal."

"Send Carl, Cousin Paul," she said quickly. "Will you—for my sake?"

"Herr Gott!" he muttered. "Then there is something wrong with that flying-man?"

"Why should you think there is anything wrong with him?" she retorted.

"You have some interest in him, Cousin Belinda."

"It seems the Herr Doktor has, too," she said significantly. "Send Carl—do. You can trust Carl."

"Ach! Baum is too great a blockhead to be anything but trustworthy," growled Paul, leaving her at the door of the women's sleeping hut.

Belinda crept to her bed that night in such a state of nervous apprehension that she could not hope to sleep. Hourly the surrounding dangers threatening Frank Sanderson and herself came closer. From all sides it seemed their safety was menaced. Whichever way she looked she could see nothing but difficulties.

The most threatening seemed to be the possibility of something abandoned by Sanderson being found at the place where the two airplanes had been burned. Doctor Herschall's preternatural shrewdness would lead him to suspect the truth, she felt sure, if anything was brought to him which he could identify as belonging to the American aviator.

Sanderson's name on his canteen, for instance, if brought to the attention of Doctor Herschall might urge the Prussian to begin an investigation sure to bring disaster to the American aviator. The Red Cross nurse determined to learn early in the morning if Carl Baum was detailed to head the searching party to the grove. If he was, she would find some way of making her cousin aid her in destroying or overlooking anything in the nature of incriminating evidence.

As long as the American aviator could play the part of August Gessler unsuspected there was a chance of his escaping destruction. As soon as his shoulder had knit so that it could be taken out of plaster Sanderson would be up and about. Then, the girl had faith to believe, a way for his escape would be opened.

Lying so long awake during the early hours of the night caused Belinda to oversleep. When, after a hurried toilet, she reached the guardhouse at the gate of the hospital enclosure and asked for her cousin, Baum, she learned that he with a file of privates, had already departed upon some detail.

Belinda was much disturbed and blamed herself heartily for the fault as she went to breakfast. What would happen now?

Erard, looking much subdued, yet with a sly twinkle in his eyes, was sweeping out the entrance to her ward when she reported a little later for duty.

"Well! a pretty figure you cut," she said to him with much sternness. "And you might have gone to a detention camp for your folly had I not pleaded for you."

"Oui, Mademoiselle," he said humbly. "I suppose I should thank you for getting the Herr Lieutenant to send me back to this vile work. Ça y est! All I get is a head like a chevaux de bois for my fun."

Then, softly, and watching her sharply: "Did the Mademoiselle deliver the message from M. Renaud to that brave aviateur?"

"Yes."

"M. Renaud seems very anxious regarding your young man," murmured Erard, but boldly. "He will attempt his rescue—yes!"

"Attempt to rescue Mr. Sanderson?" exclaimed the nurse. "From this hospital?"

"Yes. He asked many questions—all about the situation of this ward, and of the hole in the hedge through which I made my escape," and Erard's sudden grin was all mischief. "These Boches would like to know that."

"He—he would not come here—not really—to help Mr. Sanderson get away?"

"Who knows?" returned Erard. "That Renaud—he is a devil! You do not measure that child in a pint cup," he added, as though he were forced against his will to admire the ex-member of the detective police. "At least, he pumped me dry about the place, even to the situation and number of Monsieur le Aviateur's cot."

At a moment when she chanced to look forth later from the door of the hut Belinda spied Paul Genau and beckoned to him. He did not smile, nor did he seem so debonair as had been his wont; but he approached at her bidding willingly enough.

"Did Carl go?" she whispered anxiously. "Did you detail him on that errand?"

"As you requested, Cousin Belinda," he said gravely. "And I shall make it a point to see anything they may pick up before it goes to the Herr Doktor," he added significantly.

He startled her. "I—I——Oh, Paul! what shall I say to you?" the girl suddenly cried.

"Say nothing to me!" he interrupted fiercely. "I know there is some mystery—some treachery it may be—regarding this wounded airman that it is my duty to expose. But you—you, Cousin Belinda!—stand between me and my duty."

He gave her no opportunity to reply, leaving her abruptly. The Red Cross nurse was suddenly conscience-stricken. In her selfish desire to save Sanderson and herself from the coil of circumstances in which they were nipped, she had heretofore given no thought at all to the web in which she might entangle her cousins.

She had been determined, if she might, to use them in aiding Frank and herself. But how about Paul Genau and Carl Baum? What would be their punishment if they were discovered assisting in the escape of the American aviator?

"Oh!" she told herself, in self-accusation. "I did not know I could be so wicked—so utterly, utterly selfish! The poor boys! And yet—Frank must escape! And who else is there but Paul and Carl to aid me?"

CHAPTER XXVI

TOUCH AND GO

When Belinda finally found time to speak at length to Sanderson he had already received from Erard a full account of the lame man's meeting with the French spy, Renaud.

"We shall hear from Monsieur Renaud again," the aviator said confidently. "He is a really wonderful man, Belinda—a man of countless disguises and subterfuges. When I set him down in that field four days ago he drew on a peasant's smock, put his feet in sabots, and before I got my plane in the air again he was hobbling toward the village, the true picture of one of these old peasants, so decrepit and lame that even the Prussians fail to set them to work.

"I must get out of this bed and get my shoulder out of its plaster-cast as soon as possible. For in some way, by some means, I believe Renaud will give me a chance to escape. And with me, you, of course, Belinda. You must not remain longer in this perilous situation."

The nurse did not share in his sanguine feelings. But she hid her fears as best she could and, leaving the bedside of the wounded aviator, busied herself as usual about the ward.

She had spoken to the visiting physician previously about Ernest and that very morning the order came for the boy's removal to the convalescent camp. Jacob told him, and the unfortunate Ernest gave way to a violent fit of temper just as the Herr Doktor unexpectedly appeared on a round of visits.

Fortunately everything in Belinda's ward was in order. The Herr Doktor, in helmet, boots and cloak, and with his shining ebony cane, strode down the ward in his usual masterful manner. He asked a question here and there, but at the empty cot numbered seventeen he did not halt. That case had gone back to the operating table and was recorded in the annals of the hospital as one of the most successful operations of the Herr Doktor Herschall. But the patient had died.

Forewarned, Frank Sanderson was his usual calm self when the surgeon approached. But the aviator had his part to play. He sat up in bed and punctiliously saluted with his left hand when the inspecting surgeon drew near.

"Good day to you, Herr Lieutenant Gessler," said the surgeon sonorously. "I have a good report of you."

"Thank you for your interest, Herr Doktor," Sanderson responded. "Yet I shall not partake long of your hospitality here, I hope."

"No? That is a good word. Hum! I shall hope to see you——Was zum Teufel?" He turned swiftly, roaring his annoyance. Ernest had tugged at his cloak. "What do you mean, you young dog? Can you not wait your turn?"

"They send me to the convalescent camp, Herr Doktor," the boy cried. "Then it will be back to the trenches soon—I know. I cannot stand it. I will not——"

"Be still!" commanded Doctor Herschall with a sudden calmness that should have warned even Ernest of his danger. "Can you not see I am speaking with the Herr Lieutenant Gessler?"

"He? He?" repeated Ernest in his shrill voice. "He is no more the flying-man than I am."

Belinda turned toward Sanderson, a look of terror in her eyes.

The Herr Doktor's heavy cane delivered two cruel strokes across the boy's shoulders. Ernest shrieked, rolling on the floor. Belinda's intake of angry breath at this brutality was unnoticed by the enraged Herr Doktor as he wheeled and marched back up the ward.

The nurse, fearing the American would express in words the contempt and anger his features showed for the man who had committed the cruel act, sprang forward and placed her hand upon the aviator's lips, standing there while Doctor Herschall strode out of the hut.

"Get up on your bed, you little fool!" growled Jacob to Ernest. "Will you never learn to keep your mouth shut?"

But Belinda could not bear to see the boy suffer. She brought warm water and a lotion and succeeded in bathing the cruel-looking welts while Ernest continued to sob into his pillow.

"He does not deserve it, Fräulein," grumbled Jacob; but Sanderson beamed upon her from across the aisle.

An orderly appeared and read at the head of the ward: "Case Thirty-three to report in half an hour at the desk, for transportation to the rear." Jacob got the weeping Ernest up and helped him to dress.

Glancing from the window Belinda saw Carl Baum coming across the enclosure from the direction of the Herr Doktor's lodge—once the office of the kindly médecin chef. Wrung by sudden anxiety the nurse ran out to intercept the corporal.

"Good-morning, Cousin Belinda," was Baum's greeting, his round face asmile. "Does all go well with you?"

"I fear all will soon go ill with me, Carl," she said, unable to disguise her anxiety. "Where have you been?"

"The sly fox Paul sent me on a detail for the Herr Doktor, but told me to report first to him. He wished as usual to take all the credit," and Carl chuckled. "But I am a step ahead of him for once."

"Oh! what did you do?" cried Belinda under her breath.

"I was ordered to search for any personal property of either of the aviators abandoned there in the wood where they fell. It is a deserted place; nobody had disturbed the ruins of the aeroplanes."

"What did you find, Carl?" she asked hurriedly.

"Why, nothing much, Cousin. Just some odds and ends. A belt buckle with the Herr Lieutenant Gessler's identification badge upon it. A shoe that must have been the Frenchman's, for it is American made. Oh, yes! and his metal water bottle."

"Whose bottle?"

"The Frenchman's. It must be his. Here!" said Paul, showing her a paper. "I copied this that was painted on it—a part of his name."

Belinda was for the moment speechless. Before Carl could comment upon her troubled countenance Jacob called to her from the doorway of the ward. Ernest was departing.

The orderly signed her book. Indeed, the boy went as a prisoner. Men were too precious at this stage of the war for the Prussian military system to mislay a single individual.

Carl waited, troubled by his cousin's evident distress. He strolled to the door where she stood watching Ernest and the orderly depart.

"Is not all right, 'Linda? Are you worrying over that boy—where he goes?"

"No, Carl, I am not worrying over Ernest. It is something of much greater import."

"Your sweetheart!" murmured Carl. "Where is he? Is he in trouble? Does he know you were left behind when the crazy French retreated?"

"He must know that," she said absently.

"Where is he, Cousin 'Linda?" asked the boy. "Is he a very fine young man? One of those millionaires we have all read about as being so plentiful in America?"

"I never thought to ask whether he was rich or not," Belinda confessed.

"No? Ach! then you must love him indeed," Carl declared quickly. "I wish I might know him, Cousin 'Linda," he added wistfully.

She turned to him suddenly. "Do you mean that, Carl?"

"Why not?" he repeated wonderingly. "If you love him——"

"Suppose he were here—in peril of capture? Suppose he might be apprehended as a spy?"

"Ach! Do not talk so crazily, 'Linda!"

"But if he were? Would you help me to save him, Cousin Carl?" Belinda demanded recklessly.

"Herr Gott! A spy?" repeated the corporal. "But that would be a bad business. But for you, Belinda——Ach! if you love him——Well, perhaps I might be tempted for your sake to be so far untrue to the Fatherland. Gott! Who knows?"

Around the corner of the hut stormed suddenly Sergeant-major Genau.

"What are you lingering here for, Corporal Baum?" he demanded. "Were you not to report to me immediately on your return?"

"It was a command of the Herr Doktor. I have reported to him already," growled Carl, but not forgetting to salute his superior.

"Tausend Teufel! Did I not tell you to report first to me—to show me all that you found? Dummkopf! See, Belinda," he turned to address the nurse, "what it means to trust this Baum with even a simple detail. And it was for your sake I chose him to go, and told him what to do."

"Oh, Carl!" murmured Belinda reproachfully. "You might have saved——"

The corporal lost his temper completely. "What do you mean? What is this secret? Something between you, Paul, and our cousin? And you blame me if it has gone wrong, eh?"

"What if it were our secret? There are many matters past your comprehension, Carl," retorted Paul bitterly. "It was for Belinda's sake—at her request—I told you to report your success or failure to me. Did you find anything belonging to the Herr Lieutenant or to the other aviator?"

"Yes, yes! He found something!" broke in Belinda, unwisely. "He has told me. A canteen, with a name painted on it."

"Here!" growled Carl, glowering at them both and thrusting the paper under Paul's eyes. "Do you make anything of that? And what is it all about?"

"Be still—fool!" commanded Paul, studying the paper.

"Oh, but Doctor Herschall will make something of it," the nurse broke in once more, wringing her hands, quite beside herself with fear and excitement.

"See, blockhead, what you have done," snarled Paul.

"Call me no more names, scoundrel!" roared Carl. "I have fought you at school and beat you. And—Herr Gott!—I can do it again!"

He whipped out the saber he wore on duty and sprang at his cousin. Paul drew his pistol from its sheath—a deadly weapon.

"For that you are a dead man, Carl Baum!" he vowed, and would have shot his cousin through the heart on the instant.

Belinda, uttering a horrified cry, threw herself between the enraged young men.

She was aroused as she had never been aroused before. These men bent upon each other's murder were but boys in her eyes. She remembered them as joyous playfellows in pinafores; later as promising youths who vied for her favor.

Now she had been thrown in contact with them again and found them grown men—full of the faults—perhaps of the virtues, too—of soldiers.

What this awful war had done to them, to change them so utterly, smote upon Belinda Melnotte's mind with withering force.

"Boys! Boys!" she cried. "What would your mothers say? And you, who have been companions and friends for so long—like brothers! What would you do?

"Kill each other? Is there not enough blood being shed? Are you not at war with all the world? Is it not enough that torn and bleeding bodies are brought into this hospital every day that you, Carl Baum, and you, Paul Genau, must add to the awful sum of human misery?

"Stop! I will not have it. You rave of being fond of me—you two—and then act like this? Oh, you wicked ones! How dare you call me your cousin? Would I own you as cousins of mine, do you think, if you were guilty of the crime you each contemplate?

"And this it is to be German. The thirst for blood has seized upon you, as it has upon everybody entangled in this awful war.

"Thank God! I am an American!"

There was a sonorous shout from across the enclosure. The Herr Doktor had appeared suddenly at the door of his lodge.

"Hi! Ho! Hold that convalescent, Ernest Spiegel, Thirty-three of Ward Three. I want him. Do you hear, Sergeant Genau?" he added, catching sight of Paul. "Bring that boy back. Bring him to my office here at once."

Paul's left hand had been out-stretched to draw the girl aside. Carl had given no sign in his face of a better intention. Belinda thought with sinking heart that her pleading seemed to have made no impression upon the young hot-heads.

But the voice of authority spoke in the Herr Doktor's command. The young men came to attention. Carl's saber went back into its scabbard; Paul's weapon into its sheath.

The sergeant-major wheeled and started instantly for the gateway. Belinda staggered to the door of her ward, weeping in abandonment.

"Oh, Cousin! Cousin 'Linda!" begged the corporal, at length moved by her tears. "I am sorry. To offend you so——"

She heeded him not at all, but went within and the door swung shut. She crouched in her own little booth at the end of the ward, seeking to recover her self-control before Sanderson should see her.

Belinda still sat there when a soldier brought Ernest Spiegel to the hut from the Herr Doktor's office. The boy was very pale and subdued. He had nothing to say for himself.

"It is an order, most gracious Fräulein," said the soldier, passing her a paper.

The order read, in the Herr Doktor's chirography:

"Put him back in Cot Thirty-three."

CHAPTER XXVII

RENAUD

Belinda saw no more of her cousins that day. Indeed, she felt that she never wished to see them again.

And yet—Belinda was forced to confess it—the quarrel between Carl and Paul had arisen because of her. She had brought their boyish bickerings to this desperate pass.

This burden of anxiety in addition to all her other troubles broke down even Belinda Melnotte's calm. She scarcely dared go near Sanderson for more than a moment at a time during this day for fear he would apprehend trouble from the expression of her countenance.

In her present state of mind, too, she began to chide herself for imaginary faults and a lapse of morals which, at another time, she would have been bold enough to ignore.

Were not these anxieties that so burdened her mind and humbled her spirit the punishment, the logical and natural outcome of her wrong doing? Had she not committed a sin against her higher nature in so fully giving herself mentally at least to Frank Sanderson and in allowing him to lavish his affection upon her when there was a barrier between them which neither the laws of God nor man could ignore?

The memory of "Stella" and "the kiddies" which she had put aside so determinedly arose again like a wraith in her secret thoughts.

The apparent cheerfulness of the American aviator seemed a mockery to Belinda, knowing what she did. With Doctor Herschall in possession of Sanderson's canteen, its inscription perfectly readable to anybody with the knowledge the Prussian surgeon already had, the nurse expected the blow to fall at any moment.

All that seemed to trouble the aviator, however, was the return of Ernest Spiegel. "There is something behind that," he whispered to Belinda. "The wretched boy thinks he knows something. Has he been put back here to spy?"

The visiting physician seemed in no way suspicious of Sanderson. He talked hopefully of the aviator's shoulder coming out of the plaster soon. He had been patient and that virtue was to be rewarded, the doctor said.

Evening came at length. At the calling of the roll Erard was supposed to report at the guardhouse. But there was still much to do about the ward and the orderly who was to take charge for the night had not appeared.

With verbal permission from a passing officer, the harelipped man remained to complete his duties and to help Belinda. But he went out ahead of her.

It was already dark—a raw, cloudy spring night. There was a lull in the booming of the guns and the horizon to the east, west and south was streaked only intermittently with the glare of the flare-bombs and rockets.

For forty-eight hours the battle seemed to have stood still. The two armies, like two stags, had locked horns and neither seemed to be able to push the other aside.

The raw wind that swept across the hospital yard had driven everybody but the sentinels indoors. And none of them was stationed near the door of Ward Three. The night orderly came in yawning. As there were no serious cases at present in this hut there was no regular night nurse assigned.

"That fellow will be asleep and snoring in half an hour," Belinda thought. "However, there is Jacob, who may be awakened."

She stepped out and was about to hurry to the nurses' quarters when something moving in the shadow of the hut startled her. Was it the outline of a human figure, or——

"Erard!" she called in a low voice.

"Oui, Mademoiselle!" responded the infirmier.

"What is that?" she demanded. "What did you roll under the porch?"

"Sst! Mademoiselle will forget?" he begged, coming closer. "It is perhaps the blanket-roll you mean—and it may yet be of use——"

An approaching step was heard.

"Good-night, Mademoiselle," Erard said clearly. "I am due at the guardhouse—and a plank bed. Good-night."

He started away through the gloom, dragging his twisted foot. Belinda hesitated a moment only. She did not wish to be questioned. And there was possibly nothing wrong. Yet—"Trust not Rabbit-mouth too far." Renaud's written warning returned to her mind with insistence as she went her way.

Nor was all the nurse's fear unfounded. The lout of an orderly was indeed asleep and snoring within half an hour of her departure. Ward Three lay wrapped in gloom, for there was but a single shaded light on the table at the head of the room. Sighs—a few low moans—then the stertorous breathing of most of the occupants of the cots proclaimed the fact that the orderly was not alone asleep. The rest of these wounded and broken men were perhaps uneasy, for their dreams could not be happy ones.

Separated from their families, from all they loved and held dear; led by their overlords like sheep to the shambles; then, broken and suffering, brought from the trenches to this makeshift hospital, here to be made over into further food for the thundering cannon. Could men, under such conditions, sleep peacefully?

Sighing, turning, sometimes crying out in the nightmare of a remembrance of their wounds, the early hours of the night dragged by. If they woke it was to groan, seek to turn to a more restful position and then to sink back into troubled dreams again.

The swinging door of the ward was pushed quietly open. A figure crept in—a hoop-shouldered, apparently emaciated figure. With dragging step it shuffled down the ward past the sleeping orderly, who lay back in his chair with his mouth wide open, choking and snorting in his heavy sleep.

Dragging, dragging the step went down the aisle. It was a familiar sound to any who might be awake.

At the bed of the aviator it halted. Sanderson was already awake.

"Erard!"

A sharp hiss closed Sanderson's mouth. Ernest, across the aisle, raised cautiously from his pillow. He needed the use of both ears, for it was too dark for his eyes to be of much value to him.

The boy lay thus listening to catch the murmured words. They were neither German nor French phrases he overheard. He dared not betray a more active interest in the secret conference.

Then the dragging step up the ward again. The retreating figure appeared for a moment between the window and the gaze of the watching boy. Did it seem larger—taller—than Erard's?

At the end of the room it stood for a moment in the dim glow of the hooded lamp. The orderly sat up with a start and at a most inopportune moment.

The marauder seemed suddenly to tower above him. The orderly's lips opened to utter a cry of fear. The deadly weapon descended with awful force while the marauder's left hand seized the loose shirt collar of the stricken man to ease him back into the chair so that the body should not fall to the floor.

From a distance the orderly seemed still to be sleeping. In a moment the marauder glided through the door. Ernest, gasping, stifling his sobs in his pillow, cowered on his cot.

When Belinda arrived at her ward in the morning the first excitement was passed. Jacob had discovered the dead orderly in his chair, with the terrible wound in his head and the blood congealed upon the floor.

Then Erard had arrived and he had called to a passing soldier. The body was removed and Erard had wiped up the stains as well as he could. When the nurse came she had to exercise all her authority to quiet the patients. Only Ernest Spiegel, strangely enough, said not a word.

The mystery of the killing of the orderly had already been well canvassed. Was he known to have an enemy who had crept in during the night and had done the deed? For surely nobody within the ward could have accomplished this murder.

Later Belinda served Frank Sanderson his breakfast. His look assured her that he knew something about the mystery unrevealed to the other patients.

Jacob called for Ernest to get up and lend him a hand about some of his duties. The boy obeyed grumblingly. Erard was serving breakfasts at the other end of the room.

"What is it, Frank?" the nurse whispered.

"Renaud."

She repeated the name of the spy wonderingly. "He was not here? He did not kill that man?"

"Listen," Sanderson explained as she cracked his egg. "I thought it was Erard when he came creeping down the ward. Ah! a wonderful man is that Renaud. If the other wounded heard him they would not mind Erard. You see?"

"And he dared come here?"

"Yes. Good fellow! He means to bring about our escape. He is already assured of his own through the German lines to-day. We talked it all over. Even the day and hour is set. I shall then be able to walk about with my arm in a sling.

"I know the rendezvous. We shall escape together, Belinda—you and I," and he smiled upon her lovingly.

"Ah! but shall we?" she murmured, yet did not dare to put into words her fear of Doctor Herschall.

The effect of the mysterious happening of the night upon Erard was to make him for the first time since Belinda had known him quite silent. And he kept away from Sanderson's end of the ward.

This was an occurrence—the death of the orderly—that must be investigated by both the regimental commander and Doctor Herschall. But the black-browed surgeon came into the ward alone.

He said not a word when he entered. His eyes glittered. His air seemed more threatening as he passed down the aisle between the cots than it had ever before seemed to Belinda.

The nurse, startled and afraid, stood suddenly beside Sanderson's bed. It was as though she were attempting to shield the aviator from the surgeon's baleful look.

With a stern hand Doctor Herschall put her aside, so that he might have an unobstructed view of Sanderson's countenance.

"We are about to relieve you, Herr Lieutenant, of that uncomfortable cast you wear," the surgeon said harshly. "Sit up."

The aviator, not at all prepared for what was to follow, obeyed the order. Swiftly Doctor Herschall unbuttoned the loose shirt Frank wore and stripped bare the young man's muscular shoulder. But it was the left shoulder he uncovered!

Belinda sprang forward with a muffled cry. The Herr Doktor's long digit was planted firmly upon the puckered, red scar on the aviator's bared shoulder—the mark of the wound treated in the hospital in New York eight months and more before.

"Ach!" Doctor Herschall said. "So I thought." He turned and looked at Ernest, who had come back to his cot and sat there, watching the surgeon with frightened eyes.

"Well!" the Herr Doktor exploded, "what is it? What happened here last night? What do you know of this murder?"

"He—he," stammered Ernest, pointing to the aviator. "A man came into the ward when all were asleep. He came to Thirty-four and woke him. They talked."

"In German?"

"No, Herr Doktor. Nor in French. In that strange talk they say is Amerikanisch."

"Hum!" ejaculated the surgeon, working his fingers spasmodically. "What more?"

"The—the man went back up the ward. The orderly awoke before the man could escape. He sprang at the orderly and struck him down with something in his hand, Excellency."

"Hum! Is that all?"

"All I heard and saw, Excellency."

"Could you see the murderer clearly? Would you know him again? Describe him," commanded Doctor Herschall, while the intake of breath on the part of the listeners was audible.

"I—I could not see the man clearly. But I know him," whispered Ernest.

"How do you know him? Are you positive?"

"Absolutely, Herr Doktor," said the boy with more confidence. "By his step. I heard him clearly—it is not to be mistaken."

"Ah!" It was a chorused murmur from all over the ward.

Erard had come down the aisle. He stood in full view of the frightened Ernest.

"That is the man!" shrilled the boy suddenly. "He drags his foot. He it was who came here, and who killed the orderly to make his escape."

Belinda, recovering her speech; cried aloud:

"Wicked boy! It could not be Erard. He was in the guardhouse."

The little Frenchman raised his hand in salute as he stepped forward a single pace, dragging that twisted foot, to face the scowling Herr Doktor. He smiled at Belinda, saying:

"It is quite true, Mademoiselle. They are asleep, those Boches at the guardhouse. It was I who came here in the night. I knew the Herr Lieutenant had money under his pillow and I tried to steal it. The boy misunderstood the nature of our conversation. The Herr Lieutenant, in his generosity, let me go; but I was observed by the orderly, and—so——"

"Never!" gasped Belinda.

The Herr Doktor pounded upon the floor with his cane. A file of soldiers entered with Corporal Baum at their head.

"Take this man to the cage, Corporal," commanded Doctor Herschall, pointing with his stick to Erard. "And leave two men to escort the Herr Lieutenant Gessler"—he lingered over the name in a sinister way—"to the military court as soon as he is dressed."

Erard, smiling still, was close to Belinda as he turned to go with the soldiers. His twisted lip writhed with the almost inaudible phrase:

"For France!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HERO

This was a moment when the self-control of Belinda Melnotte came very near to being utterly broken.

She had suffered so much anxiety, had carried such a burden of fear, for so many days that overwrought nature was near to collapse.

And, oddly enough, it was Doctor Franz Herschall who saved her from a mental breakdown at this time.

She turned from seeing Erard marched away guarded by the file of soldiers, to face the Prussian surgeon. She realized that at last Doctor Herschall had discovered all that she had sought to hide from him. Frank Sanderson was at his mercy, and she herself was caught in a web in the center of which the Herr Doktor crouched like a venomous spider.

Next would be Sanderson's trial before the military court, the discovery of his masquerade, and then the sentence due a spy.

Herself, she must likewise be entangled in the hateful coil and dragged before the court. Her fate might be no less awful than that confronting Erard and the aviator.

All hinged upon the word of the black-browed surgeon and the testimony of his little spy, Ernest Spiegel. Belinda's eyes, staring into the surgeon's glittering orbs, must have expressed some of the bitter, bitter hatred she felt for him.

Doctor Herschall seemed to hesitate. For once, at least, he was not quick of decision. He studied the pallid face of the young nurse gloomily.

Jacob, at a gesture from the surgeon, had drawn a screen before Sanderson's cot and was helping the aviator dress. The two soldiers remaining of Carl's squad stood stolidly at the head of the ward. A strained silence had fallen over all the wounded.

The girl's hatred of this domineering and egotistical Prussian was almost overpowering.

For he was, she quite believed, the single element that would bring about the destruction of the man she loved, and of herself. It would be his evidence that convicted Sanderson of being a spy and would prove her to be an aider and abettor of an enemy of the German Empire.

For who would believe the unsupported word of the weakling Ernest? Belinda felt sure that in the pinch she might depend upon both her cousins to keep their own counsel, even to help her if they could.

Belinda and Sanderson could not hope to aid themselves by putting forth the claim of their American citizenship. In the eyes of the Germans they had forfeited that by aiding France. Indeed, Germany and the United States, if all reports were true, were on the verge of hostilities.

Belinda and Sanderson were helpless.

Then, as the girl continued to stare into the glittering eyes of Doctor Herschall, she realized that there was a new and inexplicable expression dawning in them, and upon the countenance of the Prussian.

"Nurse Genau," he said suddenly, and with all the harshness of which his voice was capable, "you are excused from duty in this ward for the present. Report to me at my office after the meeting of the court, at which the Herr Major Baron von Brandenburg will preside.

"Understand," he added, "you are in no wise to be held accountable for any phase of this affair—as yet. Nor can we ask the Herr Lieutenant Gessler"—he raised his voice that all might hear—"to attend the court save out of necessity—that we may come at the truth of all this trouble.

"As for you, du kleine Erbärmlicher, remain here and open not your mouth! If you dare disobey you will find there is something worse than the trenches."

He glared about the ward once more, ignoring Belinda, and taking his departure before Sanderson was ready to go.

There was, nevertheless, no opportunity for the nurse and the aviator to say much together in private. Besides, grasping a drifting straw of hope, both saw that the Herr Doktor had not openly treated them as enemies.

It was plain by their looks that the wounded men did not know what to make of the affair. For all that the Prussian surgeon had said, Erard's story of the night's tragic happening might be the exact truth.

If the Herr Doktor had been stern with the wounded aviator—even with the nurse—it might be only his bullying way. They all knew what that was.

Jacob wrung Sanderson's good hand as the American started up the aisle. "Gemüth, mein Herr! A brave man with your record of flying for the Fatherland need have no fear of a drumhead court. Viel Glück!"

Belinda went with the aviator to the door. The two soldiers stepped out first, one of them politely holding the door open for Sanderson. They evidently did not consider him a prisoner.

"Don't lose your grip, Belinda," the young man whispered. "All is not lost. And I believe that black-browed devil has it in his mind to save you, at least."

"Oh, but I do not want to be saved without you, Frank!" she breathed.

"Don't fear. We'll pull through. And that plucky Erard——"

"He is a hero," murmured Belinda. "His lie may save you."

"And win him a martyr's crown," said Frank not irreverently.

They looked into each other's eyes. His were filled with the light of courage; but Belinda's were misty with tears.

There was a whispering behind her in the ward as the girl stood alone. Some of the weaker patients might be harmed by all this excitement. Their temperature charts would tell the tale.

It suddenly smote Belinda Melnotte that in all probability temperature charts or other matters connected with this ward in which she had served so long, would mean very little to her in the future. Her activities here were finished in any case.

Jacob touched her arm gently.

"Fräulein," he said.

"Ah, Jacob. What is it?"

"The boys—all your patients, Fräulein—wish to tell you that their hearts are yours. You are in trouble. It may be that the Herr Doktor merely bullies you—he is that kind. But fear not. There are others higher than he who will see justice done."

"There is One Higher—I know," she said. "Thank you, Jacob."

She turned to face the ward. Every man who could was sitting or standing erect. Even those on their backs who possessed a whole hand saluted her.

"Gesegnete Zukunft!" they cried in unison.

Belinda's eyes overflowed. She could only kiss her hand to them and run out. The relieving nurse was in sight.

The wet and windy night had rightly foretold a dreary day. How could the sun have shone when all Belinda's hopes had fallen into such chaos? Self-centered as her thoughts were—centered upon Frank Sanderson and her own troubles—the Red Cross nurse felt as though the very world itself were coming to its end.

There was a third person, however, whom Belinda considered with pity and alarm—Erard. The little man with the harelip and twisted foot had indeed "done his bit" for France.

He could do nothing, this lame Erard, as a soldier of the Republic! Not for him the Médaille Militaire, or the Croix de Guerre, or other honors of the brave poilus. But to save the American flying-man who served under the tri-color, Erard was willing to stand before the firing squad, and would stand there, it was to be presumed, with that same twisted smile on his lips.

That, too, was "for France."

Belinda heard that the court martial would not sit till afternoon. It was to her cousin, Carl, hurrying across the hospital enclosure, that she put a question:

"Oh, Carl, where have they put Erard?"

"A fine little rat he is! What did I tell you?" growled the corporal. "And he's come near getting your—I mean, the Herr Lieutenant Gessler—into trouble by his lies. They have locked the wretched little scoundrel into a room in that old château yonder."

"Is that the prison? Until the French left this neighborhood, the family of the owner lived there. But they stripped it of much of its best furniture when they went away. So it is a prison!"

"A detention house, yes. Even the flying-man is there until the court convenes. But he is only a witness, of course," Carl said cheerfully.

"Carl," whispered the girl, "do you suppose I could speak to poor Erard?"

"That rat?"

"Don't speak so of him. He has aided me for months—ever since I came to the war zone to work. He has been my only help and comfort at times."

"I declare I believe him a gutter-rat from the sewers of Paris."

"I do not care. To me he has always shown his better nature."

"And he says he was trying to steal from—from the flying-man last night before the orderly was killed."

"But I pity him so! And he will surely be shot! Do, Carl!"

"It might be done," said the good-natured fellow. "I can get you a pass and take you to the château myself. It is true that there probably will be no chance for you to see him after Herr Major Baron von Brandenburg passes sentence. Ach! he is a martinet, that old boy. Yes, it might be done, by a shrewd fellow like me," and Carl winked at her.

It was done. The old château in question was less than half an hour's walk from the hospital gate. The walls about it and the grounds had been ruined by gunfire. However, all but one wing of the great building remained in remarkably good condition.

In the main portion Major von Brandenburg had established his headquarters with his staff housed in the rooms about him. But there was room in the remaining wing of the château for prisoners. A cell—originally a scullery—in the basement served Erard till such time as the court might sit. Probably, as Carl Baum intimated, shortly after the sentence was pronounced the Frenchman would not need a cell.

The corporal sent away the sentinel in the corridor on some errand and allowed his cousin to go to the door of the cell. Heavy screening took the place of glass in the upper half of the door.

Erard sat upon a bench, his chin in his palm. But when he looked up to see who darkened the window opening, his twisted smile greeted the nurse.

"Ma foi! you are welcome, Mademoiselle, though I may not offer you a chair in these, my poor quarters."

"Oh, my dear friend!" gasped the nurse. "This is a dreadful place, and a dreadful pass you have come to, my poor Erard!"

"Weep not for me, dear Mademoiselle Belinda. Poof! what is a jail more or less? I have often slept in worse cells. For sure! Half my boyhood I was a guest of the so-good police," and his roguish look appeared again. "Ask Monsieur Renaud. He knows me."

"Oh, Erard! I did not think it of you!" the girl sighed.

"No? I have made myself another reputation in the hospital—have I not? It was a fancy of mine. All my life I have been quite bad. Oh, yes, Mademoiselle; quite bad. And as they could not send me to the Bataillon d'Afrique—I am not a marching man—I should kiss the sharp knife in the end if it were not for this. I shall die a noble death, Mademoiselle, pour la patrie."

"And to save Monsieur Sanderson," the girl whispered.

"So I may hope. A fine man," said Erard quite cheerfully.

"But you are dying without cause—without reason," Belinda declared. "You did not kill the orderly. You were not in the ward last night."

"Sst! That was that sly Monsieur Renaud. You saw him dive under the porch as you came out of the ward last evening, Mademoiselle."

"But they must know at the guardhouse that you were not out of doors."

"Ah! they are sleepyheads, les Boches. Only one knows I was in all night—and him I have bribed."

"That Renaud deliberately imitated your step," she said with warmth.

Erard laughed.

"Ah! he is a knowing one. To think he should mock me so well—me, who have so often mocked him for the laughter of my comrades.

"For know you, Mademoiselle, Rabbit-mouth is not so lightly considered in Paris—among certain people, including the police. Ma foi, no!

"I have gained power by cunning—by shrewdness. Indeed, it was the only way. Otherwise I would have been crushed—trampled upon long ago. You see," he continued quite simply, "I was born to the dregs of life. The first I can remember was of being driven out upon the streets to beg by an old woman who had found me somewhere—devil knows where!

"My infirmity of the lip she thought would arouse the sympathy of those from whom I begged. But it aroused their laughter. Ah, ma foi, yes! I was meant to be a great comedian," and he shrugged his shoulders. "I can always make people laugh.

"But their laughter did not bring the centimes to the itching palm of the old woman. I was not pitiful enough with my rabbit-mouth. She had a son, that old woman, and he was wise. He told her what to do. So—my foot," and Erard thrust the crooked extremity forth.

"Oh, you told me it was run over by a farmer's wagon!" gasped Belinda.

"Oui, oui! I am that wicked one," and he grinned. "I even lied to you, Mademoiselle. But do I look like a sale cultivateur? Non! Non!

"I was a child. My bones were soft like gristle. They twisted my foot and put it in plaster, then chained me to the old beldame's bedpost. We lived deep in a cellar. Nobody could hear my cries.

"So," finished Erard, shrugging his shoulders, "after that, when I went out begging, dragging this poor foot, the sympathetic gave me more centimes for my old woman, until I could run away from her and steal and beg for myself."

The story was a dreadful one—the cheap and pitiful tale of a Paris gamin, drifting naturally into the underworld of the apaches—the shrewd, sly cripple seeking his proper level in the sewers of the metropolis. And yet Belinda could not dwell in her thoughts on that. Not of what the little harelipped man had been. It was what he was now.

A hero!

She was in tears when Carl led her back to the hospital. She had not dared to ask to speak with Sanderson. She dared not even show her fear that he, too, would be made a prisoner instead of held as a witness.

Sanderson could do nothing for Erard when he told his story before the major and the other officers, of whom Doctor Herschall would be one, because of the very nature of the crime.

If the American denied the truth of Erard's tale of attempted robbery he would merely put his own life in jeopardy without saving the Frenchman; and perhaps endanger Belinda's safety as well. The testimony of Ernest, whom Doctor Herschall had so well used, might convict the young aviator and the nurse of a greater military crime than that to which Erard confessed.

There seemed no way of helping the brave little harelipped man. He had little chance to be a real man in his miserable, sin-warped life. But he would go to a noble death—for France.

It was from Paul Genau that Belinda gained the first news of the proceedings of the military court. The sergeant-major had attended, and when he came into the hospital premises the Red Cross nurse saw that he was very grave indeed.

"Paul, what did they do to him?" she begged in alarm. "What has happened?"

"It is all over," declared her cousin. "Like that!" and he snapped his fingers. "Ah! I tell you Herr Major Baron von Brandenburg never makes two bites of a cherry."

"Oh, Paul!" wailed the girl, almost falling, "not both of them?"

"'Both of them?' What do you mean?" responded Paul. "There was but one prisoner. He was tried, found guilty, sentenced, and taken out and shot all in half an hour—like that! And by heaven! he was a cool one—that harelipped man. He borrowed a cigarette of me!

"'I may not repay you till hereafter, Monsieur,' he said.

"Then he smoked it—and they shot him."

Belinda covered her face with her hands. From between her fingers she sobbed another question.

"And the flying-man—Herr Gessler?"

"Ah, the Herr Lieutenant? Well," Paul replied slowly, "he does not return to the hospital. He is a guest of the Herr Major."

"A prisoner!"

"That I would not say," her cousin replied. "He was scarcely a witness at the trial. Indeed, witnesses were not needed—even that rat, Ernest Spiegel, was not called. What need of any evidence when the Frenchman confessed the crime? Besides, the Herr Lieutenant begged to be excused from testifying against the accused."

"Then why—oh, why!—was he not released?" cried Belinda.

"That I do not know," Paul said. "It was because of something the Herr Doktor said in confidence to the Herr Major, I believe, regarding the flying-man. The Herr Major had dismissed the aviator; but after a brief conference with Doctor Herschall, he called to the flying-man:

"'Remain, if you please, Herr Lieutenant. I find there is a point I wish to speak with you upon. I hope you are comfortable here?'

"Ah, that Baron von Brandenburg!" finished Paul, with a sigh. "He is a nobleman. He would be courteous if he were sentencing a man to purgatory."

CHAPTER XXIX

AT LAST!

The uncertainties—the desperate peril—of the situation wrung Belinda Melnotte's heart until it seemed that no longer drops could filter from her eyes. She had wept all her tears away without assuaging either her grief or her fears.

Erard's pitiful, yet noble, death was only the beginning of the tragedy. Doctor Herschall would now glut his thirst for revenge with Frank's blood—and with her own!

No other explanation could she imagine for the surgeon's delay in revealing Sanderson's identity. He could easily prove that the so-called Herr Lieutenant August Gessler was actually an American aviator, flying for France.

His suspicion of the young man, perhaps previously aroused, had become conviction when Carl had brought to him the canteen with Frank Sanderson's partly obliterated name on it. He had then proved his case by finding the old scar on the American's shoulder.

Both Belinda and the man she could not help but love were helpless in the hands of the Prussian surgeon. And could mercy be expected of one who did not know what mercy meant?

Belinda expected at any moment to be sent for by the Herr Doktor for the threatened interview in his lodge. Fate, however, intervened.

Since before noon there had been increased activity along the battlefront. The British on one side, the French on the other of the German wedge driven into this territory, were increasing their pressure. They had brought up more heavy guns. The French 75s and the British mortars were tearing great gaps in the new trenches of the German line.

So, the ambulances rolled more frequently and the wounded began pouring into this hospital station in such numbers as they had only once before and under the French régime.

Doctor Herschall came directly from the château where the court had been held to the operating ward. He threw off his helmet, cloak and outer garments, got into a fresh smock, rolled the sleeves back upon his hairy arms, bathed hands and arms in an antiseptic wash, and called for his case of polished instruments.

He called, too, for Nurse Genau.

"Send her here at once," he commanded. "She is worth all these other women put together. She knows what I want—and when I want it."

Belinda had already made herself useful. Her old ward was quite filled, so no new cases were being entered there. But the hut the women nurses had slept in was being hastily made ready for the freshly wounded. Where the nurses would sleep thereafter was a question.

"But by the sound of those guns," said one phlegmatic German woman to Belinda, "we shall have no time for sleep. Yes?"

Belinda shrank from obeying the surgeon's command. The horrors of the operating ward seemed to her now more than she could bear. Yet there was no escape. She was forced to join the black-browed Herr Doktor at the chief table—the table to which most of the serious cases were brought.

She worked far into the night—worked until she was so foot-weary she thought she must drop beside the table.

The Prussian surgeon seemed tireless. Each fresh case renewed both his vigor and his interest. Between operations he would stand, picking at the long black hairs upon his arms, or exercising his already supple fingers in that grim way which was his habit.

He was a marvel. In Belinda's mind, wearied and sick as she was, grew the wonder again of this strange man. Seemingly without heart, without conscience, a person apart from all humanity because he lacked humane feeling—or the power of expressing it—this being performed the most delicate operations with the sure skill of a master, in the same haste that another surgeon might tie up finger wounds!

He turned with his usual harshness to Belinda at the end:

"You are excused, Nurse Genau. Report at nine-thirty again. There will be some pretty cases by that time, I have no doubt."

The nurse could not reply had she wished. She almost staggered from the ward. Where she would sleep she did not know. The whole hospital was now crowded, and everybody working with might and main, while the guns thundered closer—closer.

Belinda found Carl Baum awaiting her outside. His quick hand bore her up or she would have stumbled and fallen.

"That beast!" the corporal muttered. "Has he made you work in that shambles all this time? Paul said he would."

"Hush!" begged his cousin. "Then you and Paul are friends again?"

"Ach!" growled Carl, "we have arranged a truce. For one purpose only, perhaps. But we will keep it. Never mind. You are under my care now, Cousin Belinda."

"What do you mean, Carl?"

"I am to take you to a new lodging. You will be safe there and may sleep soundly. Come."

It was to a cottage near by in which the wife of a brother corporal had set up housekeeping amid the abandoned lares and penates of its former French occupant. The woman had an honest face, and the Red Cross nurse felt safe with her.

As for sleeping, that was another matter. Aside from the thundering discharge of the heavy guns—seemingly at every round coming nearer—which shook the atmosphere so that their eardrums seemed almost to crack under the strain, the Red Cross nurse had a heart and mind too full for slumber to be a welcome visitor.

Yet she could scarcely meditate consecutively in a single line of thought as she lay on her mattress. So many, many topics—all hateful—seemed scurrying through her mind. And between these rose scenes of horror from her day's work.

She could not even cling to the thought of Sanderson's peril. For when she considered him at all there seared her conscience the thought that she had irrevocably given her love, her confidence, all that was best and greatest in her, to a man who had no right to accept the sacrifice.

She did not blame him now. She was too fair to the facts, too honorable by nature, to accuse Frank Sanderson of being the more guilty of the two.

Indeed she knew that had she not flung herself and her all upon the altar at that moment when he was brought wounded into her ward, Frank would not have known her heart, or fully revealed his own.

No. She was the wicked one, and was not all this peril that threatened them both, the punishment for their sin?

Ah, an uneasy mind is harder to bear than physical ills! Whether she deserved it or not, Belinda Melnotte bore a burden on her heart that seemingly nothing in the future could lift.

Save death. They could die together—she and Frank. Indeed, she felt she should die if Sanderson were stood up and shot as poor Erard had been. Without doubt she would have no choice in the matter. The Herr Doktor's evidence against the aviator would convict her as well.

But to have the decision postponed—to wait in this wretched uncertainty on the pleasure of the Prussian surgeon!

That is exactly what Belinda was forced to endure. She rose, coming heavy-eyed and with dragging limbs to the operating ward at the hour appointed. Doctor Herschall met her as though he saw none of the misery in her face, and by no word or look displayed interest in anything but the eternal operations.

The battle went on, and went on with unabated ferocity. The hospital was crowded as it never had been crowded before.

Day after day dragged by. Belinda did not see her cousins. Few able-bodied soldiers remained at the hospital. All were hurried to the very front to stem the rising tide of British and French success. The Allies' great push was going forward, causing the sacrifice of many Germans, and that in spite of von Hindenburg's counter attacks.

Of Sanderson, interned in the château, she heard no word. She knew that every wounded man in her old ward that could be moved, save Ernest Spiegel, had been sent to the rear. The Herr Doktor evidently had use yet for his spy.

Suddenly the burdened ambulances ceased rolling into the hospital enclosure. They passed on to the rear. The cessation of new cases, however, did not relieve the anxious expression upon the faces of most of the surgeons.

Doctor Herschall stretched his bared arms above his head, working his fingers spasmodically.

"Ho, ho! Soh! It's over? We may as well pack our kits, brothers. The order to move will soon come."

He expressed boldly the thought they all had. This army corps was being forced back. The territory gained for a few short weeks would soon be lost to the German line. The hospital station would become untenable.

They had not come into this part of France, after all, to remain!

Belinda fled from the operating ward the moment the work there stopped. The sentinel at the gate knew she now lodged outside the hospital enclosure and allowed her to pass.

She observed, yet without the fact making any deep impression upon her anxious mind, that the soldiers she passed, as well as the civilians, wore a hurried and harried air.

She had seen the rout of the French; now was she about to behold the falling back of a more sullen and more broken army?

From a soldier whose face she recognized she learned that Major von Brandenburg retained his headquarters at the château. A part of her cousins' regiment was still detailed there and she might find Paul or Carl near by.

Through them she might be able to learn something about Frank. If he was merely being detained at the instance of the Herr Doktor, with no serious accusation made against him, she hoped to reach the aviator. It seemed to Belinda as though she must see and speak to him. The several days that had passed since they had parted had been a nightmare.

Nobody sought to interfere with Belinda on the road. Her Red Cross uniform protected her even when she reached the château.

Of course, had she tried to enter the major's offices, the sentinel would have stopped her. But that was not her object.

If Frank Sanderson was still here he must be somewhere in the wing of the building in which poor Erard had spent a few brief hours in a cell.

The prisoners were down there. On the upper floors were offices and the quarters of some of the baron's staff. One of these rooms was that, it might be, in which Sanderson was detained until Doctor Herschall had decided upon his case.

Necessity made Belinda bold. She selected a side entrance of this wing well away from the main door of the château and approached quickly. Soldiers and servants were hurrying about. Two great motor-trucks were backed up here and into them the personal belongings of the staff were being loaded.

Retreat was expected, if it had not already been ordered.

In the doorway stood a soldier, his back to the nurse as she drew near.

"Will you please tell me," she began softly, when he wheeled and she beheld Paul Genau.

"Belinda!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, Paul! I am so glad to see you are safe. And Carl?"

"Ach! You can't kill that thickhead," declared the sergeant-major. "He and I were in a raid last night; just back from the front now. He's gone to have his head sewed up. He led his squad in a charge and tried to kill a Frenchman by butting him to death like a goat. And, mein Gott! I believe Baum succeeded. He'll get the Iron Cross for it, I have no doubt, der Glückshund!

"But you, Cousin? How have you done? I fancy the Herr Major smells a change in the wind," and he gestured toward the lorries and the hurrying servants.

"You will move back?"

"Or forward," declared Paul tartly. "A strategic retreat, dear Cousin, is often the forerunner of a safe advance."

"But whichever happens," the nurse said earnestly, "I wish to know what has become of—of the flying-man?"

"Ah! Is it so?"

"I have come to see him, Paul. You must help me!" she whispered. "Is he still here?"

"The Herr Lieutenant August Gessler is here and very comfortably entertained," Paul said. "Merely, for some reason best known to the Herr Doktor, he is requested not to leave his room—in the rear on this floor."

"Oh, Paul! I must see him," she repeated.

"Why?" asked the young man, his eyes averted from her face. "Why are you so deeply interested in this flying-man?" he added.

"If you are my friend, Cousin Paul, you will not ask," she told him softly.

He looked at her again and there was something in his countenance she did not understand.

"Belinda," he said, "you evidently do not know what has happened."

"What is it? Not to Fra—to the flying-man?"

"Ach! all you think of is this flying-man," muttered Paul. "No. It is something of considerable more moment. You are an American, you say. We can be no longer friends, for our countries—yours and mine, sweet Cousin—are at war!"

"Oh, Paul!"

"So I have just learned. It is not our Kaiser who makes this war; it is your President. War was declared by the United States yesterday. So, do you expect me still to be your friend?"

She could not answer him. Something in her throat choked back any word she might have uttered. Her cousins! Not only Paul, but Carl!—all her mothers relatives in Germany—were now actually arrayed against her if she was an American! She held out her arms to her cousin.

The young man took her hand and with no further word led her down a corridor, across a great and almost bare room, and there knocked upon a door.

"Come in," said a voice in German that made Belinda's heart leap. She looked again at Paul, her gratitude in her eyes.

"This much I may do for you, Cousin Belinda," he whispered. He raised her hand to his lips. But she impulsively put both arms about his neck for a moment and her warm lips left their impress on his brow.

"Come in!" said the voice again.

Belinda pushed inward the door. Frank Sanderson sat with a book at the table in the middle of the great chamber, the barred windows of which looked out upon the deserted rear premises of the château.

"Belinda! My dear girl!"

An unseen hand drew the door close again. Paul shut out of his tortured vision the sight of his cousin running hysterically into another man's arms.

"At last!" murmured Frank, after a moment. "I feared——Do you know what day this is? The date Renaud set for our rescue. But the rendezvous is in that wood where I fell with the German—do you understand? It was to be to-night or early to-morrow morning. How shall we get there?

"I am practically a prisoner," continued the aviator. "And you, Belinda?"

She told him swiftly, her head on his bosom the while, his good arm encircling her. They stood thus when a sharp and sudden explosion of voices arose in the anteroom. The door was flung open. Doctor Franz Herschall stood confronting them.

CHAPTER XXX

"THOSE EYES—THAT HAND!"

"Soh! I find you thus?"

The words, the sneering lash of the Herr Doktor's tone, held the American aviator and nurse silent.

"Treachery is afoot. These cousins of yours, Fräulein Belinda—the sergeant-major and the corporal—they are in this conspiracy, too? I have had my eye on them. The evidence I may put before Herr Major von Brandenburg will be of a most convincing character."

He had entered and closed the door behind him. He stood with his cloak thrown back and now counted off upon his fingers the points of his case quite as though he were instructing a hospital class of fledgling surgeons.

"First: An American aviator, flying for France—'Frank Sanderson, Pilote Aviateur'—is found within our lines, dressed in the uniform of a German officer, claiming the name and honors of the most unfortunate Herr Lieutenant August Gessler. What is this American? A spy! His punishment? Death!

"Second," pursued the sonorous if harsh voice of the Herr Doktor: "Erard, a Frenchman, a party to this vile conspiracy, knowing the American aviator; having already paid the just penalty for the murder of the orderly Vontromp."

His words were punctuated by several dull but near-by explosions in succession. Belinda shuddered and again cowered close to Sanderson's side. The latter's arm supported her.

"Do not be so disturbed, Fräulein Belinda," Herschall said. "They are only bombs being dropped by the dastardly French. An air attack is being made in this direction. If they blow us all up in this château so much the better. Yes?"

As Herschall spoke, he glanced from the high barred window as though to sight the squadrons of the air.

It was what Renaud had promised. He thought he could bring it about. An air attack in force in the vicinity to frighten the Germans and give the aviator and the nurse a chance to make for the wood.

"Third and fourth," went on the doctor: "Two young fools whom you claim as cousins, Fräulein. Whether your relationship to them is such or not, you have evidently quite turned their heads. I caught one of them just now standing guard at the door of this room. He dared even try to forbid my entrance.

"They, too, are in this conspiracy. They lend their assistance to enemies of the Empire. With this American, and the Frenchman already passed on, I may include these young cousins in the category of my accusation to the Herr Major.

"What say you, Fräulein Belinda. Shall I do this?"

He waited for her answer; but the girl could not speak. Sanderson's lip curled with disdain as he gazed upon the Prussian.

"Why do you wreak your petty malice on a woman, mein Herr?" he asked. "I have but one good arm, and that my left one. But it can hold a sword or a pistol, whichever you may choose. Let us have it out like men."

"Oh, Frank!" gasped Belinda clinging more tightly to him.

"Fear not, Fräulein Belinda," retorted the surgeon, raising his right hand and working the clever fingers as though they were clutching at his enemy's throat. "These eyes of mine are not to guide a sword; that hand wields more delicate instruments than a pistol. I enter into no brawl with you, Herr Sanderson. Why should I fight? There is nothing to fight for. I hold the fate of all of you in my hand," and he clenched it in the empty air again.

Again a bomb exploded. This time it must have been within the premises of the château.

"I will not fight Herr Sanderson," the surgeon said directly to Belinda. "But you may save him, and with him your cousins, if you choose."

"How?" the girl gasped.

"Pay no heed to the dog," said Sanderson quickly.

"And save yourself," pursued the Prussian.

Sanderson was silenced. Again the hysterical girl cried:

"How? Tell me how?"

"By leaving that man there," said the surgeon pointing. "By coming to me. By showing me some favors, Fräulein Belinda.

"You well know my admiration for you, and of its duration you are informed. A man like me loves but once; and if he loves, the object of his affection cannot be denied him. I have been patient. I have waited. You sought to escape me by leaving New York. But you see, it was impossible. Fate—whatever you care to call it—brought us together here.

"Ah, Fräulein Belinda! I am the man for you—your fit mate. No weakling, who cannot help himself save by offering to fight. Pah! A bully and a baby, both. The strong man takes what is his own—and I take you."

"Not by threatening my life, nor those of her cousins—you dog!" Sanderson broke in. "Pay no attention to him, Belinda. I would not accept my life on such terms—nor would Paul and Carl, I feel sure, accept theirs."

Doctor Herschall laughed. Again a falling bomb exploded, the shock of it deafening them for a moment.

"The offer is not made to you, Herr Sanderson. Therefore you may not refuse it," said the surgeon when he could be heard.

"Fräulein Belinda must choose. And forget not I have a fifth division to my theme. A word from me and you, my fair Fräulein, will join that man and your cousins before the military court. And we Prussians, Gott sei dank! give spies a short shrift."

"Now you over-reach yourself, Herr Doktor," Sanderson interposed with an appearance of confidence he was far from feeling. "You can only accuse Miss Melnotte of being a Red Cross nurse who bravely remained to care for wounded Germans at that hospital station when the French fled."

"Under an assumed name," snarled Herschall.

"Using the German part of her name, which she was advised to do by a German soldier. In addition, you who knew her at once, waited till now to betray her to the military authorities.

"So, Herr Doktor," concluded Sanderson calmly, "whatever you may make out against me or against her cousins, your case against Miss Melnotte falls to the ground."

"Soh!" exploded the surgeon, glaring at them. "You think to flout me, do you? What of this?"

He suddenly held forth for them to see the A. D. F. and bar of the French army—the insignia it had been Belinda's right to wear.

"Found in her private locker in Ward Three," snarled the doctor. "Worn continually as I can prove by at least one witness before we advanced and seized the hospital station.

"You see, Herr Sanderson, Miss Belinda is an officer of the French Army—rightfully a lieutenant. She is a spy, as you are a spy. And if I recite these facts to the Herr Major, her fate will be your fate."

He had stunned them. All Sanderson's sophistry in striving to cheer the nurse was borne down. She turned swiftly and placed her arms about his neck and never while Frank Sanderson lived could he forget the look glowing in her eyes.

"I do not care, Frank," she said softly. "I would rather die with you than live alone!"

There was the sharp, shrill, growing whistle of a shell. The Herr Doktor cried out hoarsely, wheeling toward the window.

At the impact of the aerial projectile just above the stone-encased window, the château seemed to rock. Bursting inward broken stone and twisted iron clattered to the floor of the chamber. A great gap was torn in the outer wall.

Belinda and Sanderson were driven back into the far corner. The Herr Doktor, facing the bursting shell, received a part of its scattering contents in face and body.

He shrieked—an awful, soul-harrowing cry. Staggering backward, his face was revealed again to the cowering aviator and the nurse.

Blood streamed from his eyesockets. His right arm, to which that wonderfully clever hand with its dexterous fingers had been attached, was merely a bleeding stump—severed by the shell below the elbow.

The horrified nurse could not utter a sound, but Sanderson leaped to aid the falling surgeon. Herschall sank upon the American's left arm and so, muttering and moaning, slipped to the littered floor of the chamber.

"Gone! Gone!" Herschall whispered, and sank into unconsciousness. Sanderson rose slowly from his knees and looked at Belinda.

Retreating cries, hoarsely given commands, the tramp of men, the rolling of wheels, the snorting of the motors sounded clamorously outside the château. As Sanderson caught at the hand of the Red Cross nurse a bandaged head and a full, red face was thrust in at the aperture in the wall where the plaster was sifting down.

"Cousin Belinda! Herr Lieutenant! Paul told me you would be here. Come quickly. The French are dropping bombs as thick as Wurst im Schornstein. No time to lose. Come!"

"Carl! Cousin Carl!" cried the nurse, an expression of renewed hope in her voice.

She and the aviator stepped over the mercifully unconscious man on the floor. Frank, explaining in a few words Renaud's plans, helped the girl over the broken masonry. There was nobody to halt them. The Germans, panic-stricken, were fleeing from the front of the château.

Led by Carl, a comical enough looking figure with his bandaged head, they escaped from the vicinity, reaching without mishap the road that passed near the wood where Sanderson and the German airman had fallen.

The German troops chanced not to be following this road. But there were many of them, stubbornly fighting the French between the Americans and safety. Baum halted.

"I must return to my company, or be marked for punishment. Paul will be able to save me from that if I report at once. He is as much your friend as I am, Cousin Belinda, though our people are at war."

The boy was frankly weeping.

"If I take you with me, dear Cousin, I take you and your—your sweetheart into deeper trouble. For you are both under suspicion."

"But you and Paul?" Sanderson asked quickly.

"Fear not for us, mein Herr," the corporal said. "We shall get out of the scrape all right. Trust der schlaue Fuchs, Paul, for that. And me—am I not sure to get the Iron Cross for last night's work? Or, so they tell me," he added proudly. He thrust a pistol into the aviator's hand. "Take this," he said. "It may be useful."

The aviator wrung his hand. Belinda kissed him warmly.

"I do not wish to know where you go or your plans," Baum added hurriedly. "We retreat. It is a strategy of the great von Hindenburg they say. However, our ways separate here. Auf Wiedersehn!"

The corporal wheeled abruptly and marched away. He did not again look back at them—at his cousin and the man she loved standing at the cross-roads, hand in hand.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE ESCAPE

There was an explosion. Sanderson urged Belinda on up the dusty road.

"Do not weep for them," he urged, knowing her tender heart was torn by this parting from the cousins. "Believe all will come right in the end. And they are brave boys."

"How do we know we shall ever see them or hear of them again?" she sobbed. "Oh, Frank! this war—this war! And we are in it, too—we Americans! The whole world seems mad!"

"We are in it the sooner to end it, let us hope," he muttered. Then: "The wood yonder is the safest place for us. Let us hurry, dear heart. Renaud will have arranged with the French airmen to drop no bombs there."

They pressed forward, saying little for some time, for their peril was great and fear drove them on. Along the battlefront the great guns volleyed and thundered. It was growing dusk, but the glare from the lines, the flare of bombs and exploding shells, flouted the falling night.

Suddenly, in their rear, a great light burst skyward. The explosion crashed in the ears of the fugitives and Belinda would have fallen had her companion not held her up.

As they looked back the château from which they had so recently escaped, seemed to rise heavenward. The vibration of the disintegrating mass rocked the earth itself.

"The Germans had mined it. They are destroying everything as they retreat," Sanderson said. "Ah, but this Northern France will be a barren waste for years to come!"

Belinda clung to him in horror and alarm. "That unfortunate man—the Herr Doktor?" she questioned. "Do you suppose they found him—that he was removed? Even Carl did not seem to see him lying there."

"There were still soldiers searching the château as we escaped with your cousin's aid," Frank declared. "A man of Doctor Herschall's attainments and importance could not be overlooked. But, poor chap, I wonder if he would not rather be blown up with that castle than be brought back to life, blind and lacking that clever hand of his."

"One of his own 'surgical triumphs,'" shuddered the nurse. "Ah, Frank! it is more than fate. There is the hand of God in it. Doctor Herschall never used his wonderful eyes and hands to the glory of the Giver, but for his own sole aggrandizement. But I would not have had him die that way."

"Nor anybody else," added the aviator solemnly. "It touches us nearly, dear girl. See! We might have gone skyward with that wreck," he went on more lightly.

"Whereas," said Belinda, with a tremulous smile, "you intend taking me skyward in an aeroplane. I—I——Suppose we should fall, Frank?"

He put his arm about her tenderly to help her over a rough place in the road.

"At least we shall fall together," he responded. "Do not fear."

"Yes, let us go on," Belinda breathed. "We have each other—and nothing else matters."

"You are right. I have you and you have me. Nobody can part us——"

"Frank! Frank!" she burst forth suddenly. "That is not true! Oh! I had forgotten. I—I wish we had died back there in the château!"

"Belinda!" he cried, in horror.

"I am not yours! You cannot be mine! Between us is that other woman—your children!" gasped the overwrought girl, and fell to weeping wildly.

Amazed, he halted her, holding her firmly by both shoulders.

"Hush, dear girl!" he begged. "Belinda! Have you gone mad? What are you saying?"

"Stella! Your 'kiddies'! I heard you and your brother speak of them."

"Jerry's widow!" uttered Frank as if stunned.

"Jerry's'?"

"Jerry Cameron. My best chum. He married a silly little fool of a woman in his sophomore year. His father turned him adrift for it and Jerry went to work. Sold autos. Plucky fellow after all. And the babies came in plenty. Why is it, can you tell me, that women who shouldn't have children always have a raft of 'em?"

"Go on!" commanded Belinda, in no mind for abstruse problems.

"The poor chap died. He left the little family something. I have conserved it so it brings Stella in an income; and I'm the kiddies' guardian. There'll be something for them from the grandfather some day. Cute little beggars they are.

"Of course, I left the whole business in the hands of a capable lawyer when I came away. But I had to run from Stella. Jove! she'd talk one to death. And, to tell the truth, because Jerry left the kiddies in my care she's inclined to think I ought to absorb her into the contract, too. She even started a report that I was going to marry her, and some of my old college chums thought we were married. But not much! Stella's got no chance with me."

"Oh, Frank!" the Red Cross nurse breathed, with drooping head. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

His arm was around her again.

"What is it, sweet girl?" he asked anxiously. "Tell me, darling."

"I can't! I won't! I've been so wicked," gasped Belinda, sobbing again. "I've thought such terrible things of you, Frank! Terrible things!"

"You couldn't!" he declared cheerfully. "At any rate, we understand each other now."

"Yes. But—Frank——"

"What is it, Belinda?" drawing her still closer.

"Oh—nothing! Nothing! Only I—I——Oh, I'm so happy!" she replied with a sigh of ecstasy.

The battle still raged as the wearied pair pursued their way to the wood. Only once did they pass anybody to hold speech with, for this road ran parallel with the battleline, rather than to it or away from it.

A group of peasants huddled in a corner of a stone wall, over against what might have been their ruined cottage—old men, women and children. The latter cowered in their mothers' skirts and only jerked their tiny limbs and moaned when the great shells burst. They would not speak.

"The continual explosions affect the children's nerves so that the whole countryside suffers from an epidemic of St. Vitus' dance," the nurse said. "Just think of the effect of this awful war upon unborn generations!"

One of the silent men under the shelter of the wall rose when the American passed and shuffled after them. Belinda glanced back at him as they toiled on.

"What do you suppose he wants, Frank?" she whispered.

"We will see when we get to the wood," the aviator said.

In the shadow of the wood the peasant overtook them. "All from the air, Monsieur," he said, and removed the ragged hat he wore, and which had half concealed his features.

"Renaud!" ejaculated the aviator. "I was not sure of you until you spoke."

"And I, Monsieur—I feared you had gone up in smoke with yonder château till I descried you and Mademoiselle plodding along the road."

The safety of the Americans was assured with the appearance of Monsieur Renaud. Yet Belinda could scarcely look at the man, she could not touch his hand. She thought of Erard!

The French spy listened to the account of Erard's brave end with reverence.

"Ah!" he said, "we French—even the dregs of us—are patriots. A fine finish for Monsieur Rabbit-mouth. And a greater rascal in the old days before the war never infested the skirts of Montmartre."

"Whatever he was," the aviator said warmly, "we know he passed out a hero. I honor him."

"And I—and I!" murmured the nurse. "Oh, how much! Poor little Erard! There was much to forgive in his life; but the germ of greatness lay always hidden in his dwarfed nature."

"Mademoiselle is a philosopher," Renaud returned, with a kindly glow upon his plain face.

He led them into the center of the wood where there was an open lawn—not the clearing into which Sanderson had tumbled in his duel with the German flying-man, August Gessler. Here the spy had hidden a flash-signal which he recovered, and likewise some food and a bottle of wine.

He advised, too, after they had refreshed themselves, that Belinda try to sleep, and offered the peasant's smock which he had removed to cover her. But the Red Cross nurse was too excited and anxious to close her eyes. She sat leaning against a tree, listening to the talk of the aviator and Renaud as the long hours of the night passed.

At dawn came the returning of a squadron of bomb-dropping machines accompanied by several Nieuports. One of the latter descended swiftly at Renaud's signal. As it volplaned and then was redressed with nicety, Belinda seized Sanderson's arm in newborn excitement.

"Look! The flag!" she cried.

On the wings of the airplane, where before the tri-color of France had been painted, the pilot of the Nieuport—himself in the khaki and buttons of the United States Army—had repainted the wings of his airplane with the Stars and Stripes. The first Yankee airman to carry his country's flag over the German lines!

"The flag!" repeated Frank, his face aglow. Then he turned suddenly to the girl and smilingly asked her:

"Have you learned yet that you are an American, Belinda—a real American?"

The girl opened the bosom of her nurse's blouse with swift fingers. From within she drew a folded silk American flag.

"Frank!" She kissed the bit of silk reverently. "Frank, I think I have known that ever since Carl tore this from the wall of my ward."

CHAPTER XXXII

FROM WAR TO PEACE

A heavy flying Voisin sank to the earth following the appareil de chasse. The bomb-thrower hopped out and ran to Sanderson to shake hands.

"You are a sight for sore eyes, Sandy!" he declared. "When Renaud brought back the news of your accident and that you were fooling the Boches, we voted you the palm. But now——"

The volatile fellow turned to make Belinda a sweeping bow.

"And your story is not unknown along this sector, Mademoiselle Melnotte. I pray you may have a safe voyage 'over the top,' as the boys say when they mount the trenches for a bayonet charge."

"Ah, Renaud! The top of the morning to you! Now, let's aboard. We'll have a gang of Boches down upon us if we don't."

He ran to take the extra seat upon the Nieuport, waving his hand cheerfully. His spirit of reckless courage seemed to inspire them all. Sanderson helped Belinda to mount into the Voisin, which was able to carry their weight besides that of the pilot and the machine gun.

Renaud remained behind as the aeroplanes ascended, one after the other. He still had work to do within the enemy's lines. In the gray dawn he stood, a dim figure in the clearing as the airplanes spiraled upward.

Yet somehow he seemed a dominating figure, too. It is by the work of such men as well as the bravery of the aviator-observers that the Allies are to conquer in this war.

The squadron of French airplanes had now drifted over the battleline while up from the German camps had sprung tauben and Fokkers in swift pursuit.

The Voisin and its accompanying Nieuport rose higher in an attempt to escape the observation of these enemy craft. Both Sanderson and Belinda, unprepared for the aerial journey, soon began to suffer from the cold.

Renaud had, in the end, forced his farmer's smock upon the girl. She cowered under this, her teeth chattering, her extremities fast becoming numb. The pilot saw their suffering and made himself heard above the noise of the motor.

"Which shall it be, Monsieur and Mademoiselle? Frost or bullets?"

"It is a slim choice," groaned Sanderson. "But we may escape shrapnel and mitrailleuse pellets. The cold takes her breath, Monsieur. I beg of you, descend!"

The great machine volplaned. It moved so slowly compared with the Nieuport, that the latter craft winged circles about the Voisin, ready to stave off attack.

They had, however, been discovered. Had not a fleet of battleplanes risen to meet the Germans from behind the French lines, the two tardy flying machines must have been swooped upon by a whole army of Boches.

As it was, three of the enemy machines attacked the Voisin and accompanying Nieuport.

Sanderson left Belinda strapped to her seat and did good service with the machine gun. He almost immediately got one of the three enemy airplanes and the girl saw the aviator and his machine—the latter on fire—go spinning down the airways to a dreadful fall.

She was in the midst of battle and sudden, awful death. This was far worse than anything she had dreamed of in all her field hospital experience.

The thundering of the trench cannon, the bursting of shells, the results of the earth conflict, were dwarfed by what she now saw.

Men fighting, almost hand to hand, in the unstable air! It was the conflict of a nightmare—not reality! The Red Cross nurse, used as she had become to the horrors of warfare, had never seen anything like this.

The roaring of the motor drowned most other sounds. Yet there was an insistent whining in her ears that could not be the wind singing through the wires of the airplane.

A cable snapped, coiling in an ever-agitated, vibrating spiral. That was no mere incident of flying! She saw the pilot's cap suddenly torn open. A gory smear appeared along the side of his head above his exposed ear!

The bullets were flying like gnats about them.

She beheld Sanderson, working madly the crank of the machine gun, suddenly sway backward and clap his uninjured hand to his wounded shoulder.

Belinda shrieked: "You are hit! Frank, they have shot you!" and she flung herself along the seat to his side.

His lips moved:

"They've got me again, girl. But don't be alarmed. I could put that fellow out of business with a few more shots."

She sensed his meaning, if she did not hear all he said. The large enemy airplane was hovering overhead. Sanderson had aimed the gun at the tail of the German craft.

Belinda seized the crank. Somehow she managed to throw in the clutch and immediately began turning the crank steadily. She was cool despite the roar and rattle of the spiteful gun.

"There! There!" shouted Sanderson. "Brave girl! We've got him!"

The enemy airplane "went off on the wing." As it passed the Voisin the German pilot turned his pistol upon the three in the French machine.

Fearfully Frank turned to the girl as her head sank upon his shoulder. Through the sleeve of the smock she wore he saw the spreading crimson stain.

"Belinda! You are wounded!"

She sighed. Her eyes opened drowsily. He saw her lips move and read the words they formed:

"I—love—you. Whatever comes, we have—each—other, dear."

He held her tightly, forgetting the sharp pain of his own wound. The crippled Voisin drifted over the battleline and the pilot finally made a safe landing within French territory.

"By Hannah!" exploded Captain Raphael Dexter. "We'll do it to-morrow—at the American embassy—the two couples of us! I'll stand up with you, Frank, and you can stand up with me."

This was some days after the shipmaster had found the wounded couple and had moved heaven and earth to bring them back to Paris on the nearest thing to a special train that money and influence could buy in the French Republic.

Captain Raphael Dexter had just come back to the hotel to Sanderson from one of his frequent calls at the furnished apartment on the Rue di Rivoli, where Miss Roberta Melnotte reigned supreme. For Belinda was resting and recuperating and the small maid had little to do but watch "Mam'selle" do the work.

"She's a mighty tidy craft," Captain Dexter pursued, in the honesty of his heart. "And no Quaker, by Hannah! She just fizzes when she gets on the subject of these Germans. I declare I do like a woman with spunk in her.

"It's hard lines when a man has to go outside his own family and home for excitement. I've always, Frank, been hampered by milk-and-watery womenfolk. My wife and my darters—Prudence, Patience and Penelope—never had enough life in 'em to keep a man awake.

"Now," went on the shipmaster, "if a man had such a wife as this here Mam'selle Roberta would make, by Hannah! he wouldn't have to hunt distraction all over the earth—not by a jugful!"

"If Mademoiselle Roberta and Belinda agree," said the aviator, "I don't see why we can't do as you say, Skipper."

The old fellow grinned at him like a boy.

"That girl Belinda," he said, "would marry you in her cap and apron if you said the word. By Hannah! boy, you don't realize yet what sort of a woman you've got in her."

"Oh, don't I?" the young man returned. "Don't you fool yourself, Captain."

Captain Dexter's plan was carried out. The embassy was American soil. They needed no special marriage license.

Even Aunt Roberta did not demand conformance with French custom. To tell the truth, since Belinda and Frank had decided, because of their wounds, to spend the furloughs granted them in New York, Aunt Roberta had been only too anxious to depart from that "so-dear Paris." She did not talk of it much, but after ten years in America, Paris had been a distinct disappointment to the taut little Frenchwoman.

"Besides," she confessed to her niece, "I am anxious to see that dear Old Saybrook—a spot très charmant, I am sure. Ma foi, oui! Le capitaine wrote long ago to his three daughters, Mesdames Prudence, Patience and Penelope, to tell them he would marry me. Though for my part I do not see how he could know that, when at the time he had not yet asked me," she added innocently. "But le Capitaine Dexter is so masterful.

"And so the Mesdames Prudence, Patience and Penelope have all written to me asking me to visit them. Ma foi! In marrying le capitaine I marry a family, do I not?"

To Belinda Frank said:

"I presume my brother Jim will rake me over the coals for enticing you into matrimony. To be an airman's wife——"

"But you fly for our country, Frank—for America! She needs you, as she needs me. We Americans have entered this war with noble intent. As our forefathers fought for freedom and democracy for us in seventy-six, so we must now fight for the same good gifts for all the world."

"I believe you are an American, Belinda—the best of us all!" Frank rejoined, gazing upon her earnest face tenderly.

THE END

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Table of Contents

- BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS
- CONTENTS
- BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

- CHAPTER I

- A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE AIR

- CHAPTER II

- THE WRECK OF HIS HOUSE OF CARDS

- CHAPTER III

- CROSSED WIRES

- CHAPTER IV

- A DECISION

- CHAPTER V

- THE RUNAWAY SHIPMASTER

- CHAPTER VI

- FELLOW VOYAGERS

- CHAPTER VII

- THE MONSTER

- CHAPTER VIII

- "POUR LA PATRIE"

- CHAPTER IX

- FIRST EXPERIENCES

- CHAPTER X

- BELINDA AT WORK

- CHAPTER XI

- AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

- CHAPTER XII

- THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

- CHAPTER XIII

- THE PREPARATION

- CHAPTER XIV

- AMID WAR'S ALARMS

- CHAPTER XV

- AT THE MERCY OF THE ENEMY

- CHAPTER XVI

- A THREATENING SITUATION

- CHAPTER XVII

- EXCITEMENT ENOUGH

- CHAPTER XVIII

- PERILS INCREASE

- CHAPTER XIX

- OVER THE ENEMY'S LINES AT NIGHT

- CHAPTER XX

- THE DUEL

- CHAPTER XXI

- ACROSS BURNING SANDS

- CHAPTER XXII

- LOVE AT WAR

- CHAPTER XXIII

- BECLOUDED

- CHAPTER XXIV

- HER FEARS ARE SHARPENED

- CHAPTER XXV

- PAUL IN THE WHIRLPOOL OF DOUBT

- CHAPTER XXVI

- TOUCH AND GO

- CHAPTER XXVII

- RENAUD

- CHAPTER XXVIII

- THE HERO

- CHAPTER XXIX

- AT LAST!

- CHAPTER XXX

- "THOSE EYES—THAT HAND!"

- CHAPTER XXXI

- THE ESCAPE

- CHAPTER XXXII

- FROM WAR TO PEACE

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE