. Hoover and
plunged, with barely a gasp for breath, into that boiling sea of
troubles--the organization of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. It
does not take Mr. Hoover very long to size up the worth and stability of
any man; but in Phil he had found--and he knew he had found--a peculiar
treasure. Phil's unfailing patience, his thoroughness and courtesy,
quickly endeared him to all his colleagues and did much to make possible
the successful launching of the vastest and most difficult project for
relief ever undertaken by mortal men. Thus, almost overnight, Jimmy's
private secretaryship became anything but a sinecure. For nearly three
months their labors held them in London; then they were sent--not
unadventurously--to Brussels; there to arrange certain details of
distribution with Mr. Whitlock, the American Minister, and with the
directors of the Belgian _Comite National_.

But from Brussels their paths presently diverged. Jimmy, craving
activity, threw himself into the actual work of food distribution in the
stricken eastern districts; while Phil passed gravely on to Herculean
labors at the shipping station of the "C. R. B." in Rotterdam. He
remained in Rotterdam for upward of a year. Susan, meanwhile, had been
driven with the Belgian Army from Furnes, and was now attached to the
operating-room of a small field or receiving-hospital, which squatted
amphibiously in a waterlogged fragment of village not far from the Yser
and the flooded German lines. It was a post of danger, constantly under
fire; and she was the one woman who clung to it--who insisted upon being
permitted to cling to it, and carried her point; and, under conditions
fit neither for man nor beast, unflinchingly carried on. Mona Leslie was
no longer beside her. She had retired to Dunkirk to aid in the
organization of relief for ever-increasing hordes of civilian refugees.

And where, meanwhile, was one Ambrose Hunt, sometime _dilettante_ at
large?

It had proved impossible for me to sail with Phil and Jimmy. Just as
the preliminary arrangements were being made, Aunt Belle was stricken
down by apoplexy, while walking among the roses of her famous Spanish
gardens in Santa Barbara, and so died, characteristically intestate,
and, to my astonishment, I found that I had become the sole inheritor of
her estate; all of "Hyena Parker's" tainted millions had suddenly poured
their burdensome tide of responsibilities--needlessly and
unwelcomely--upon me. There