been a very fine dash into the wilds of a land of
strangeness, and I do not know that I have yet found myself completely
returned unto my estate of a woman.

I first began to realize that I was set out upon a great journey when
I stood at the rail of the very large ship and watched it plow its way
through the waves which they told us with their splendor hid cruel
mines. I felt the future might be like unto those great waves, and it
might be that it would break in sparkling crests over high explosives.
I found them!

I had seen a fear of those explosives of life come in my dying
father's eyes, and here I stood at his command out on the ocean in
quest of a woman's fate in a strange country.

"Get back to America, Bob, and go straight to your Uncle Robert at
Hayesville in the Harpeth Valley. He cut me loose because he didn't
understand, when I married your mother out of the French opera in
Paris. When I named you Roberta for him he returned the letter I sent
but with a notice of a thousand dollars in Monroe and Company for you.
I didn't tell him when your mother died. God, I've been bitter! But
these German bullets have cut the life out of me and I see more
plainly. Get the money and take Nannette and the kiddie on the first
boat. There's starvation and--maybe worse in Paris for you. Take--the
money--and--get--to--brother Robert. God of America--take--them
and--guide--"

And that was all. I held him in my arms for a long time, while old
Nannette and small Pierre wept beside me, and then I laid him upon his
pillow and straightened the little tricolor that the good Sister of
the old gray convent in which he lay had given me to place in his hand
when he had begged for it. My mother's country had meant my mother to
him and he had given his life for her and France in the trenches of
the Vosges. And thus at his bidding I was on the very high seas of
adventure. From this thought of him I was very suddenly recalled by
old Nannette who came upon the deck from below.

"_Le bon Dieu_," she sighed, as she settled herself in her
steamer chair and took out the lace knitting. "Is it not of a goodness
that I have tied in my stocking the necessary francs that we may land
in that America, where all is of such a good fortune? And also by my
skill we have one hundred and fifty francs above that need which must
be almost an hundred of their huge and wasteful dollars. All is well
with us." And as she spoke she pulled up the collar of Pier