ppy passenger, and then at the edge of the field he brought up the
elevator and the little scout, roaring like a thousand express trains,
shot up through the mist and disappeared from the watchers on the road
in the low-hanging clouds, bearing to the bereaved and saddened staff of
One-Three-One Hector O'Brien's understudy.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST LOAD

Along a muddy road came an ambulance. It was moving slowly, zigzagging
from side to side to avoid the shell holes and the subsidences which the
collapse of ancient trenches on each side of the road had caused. It was
a secondary or even a tertiary road, represented on the map by a spidery
line, and was taken by driver Vera Laramore because there was no better.

From the rear end of the ambulance showed eight muddy soles, three pairs
with toes upturned, the fourth at such an angle, one foot with the
other, as to suggest a pain beyond any but this mute expression.

On the tail-board of the ambulance an orderly of the R. A. M. C.
balanced himself, gaunt-eyed, unshaven, caked from head to foot in
yellow mud, the red cross on his untidy brassard looming faintly from
its grimy background. Beyond the soles with their worn and glaring
nails, a disorderly rumple of brown army blankets, and between the
stretchers a confusion of entangled haversacks, water-bottles and
equipment, there was nothing to be seen of the patients, though a thin
blue haze which curled along the tilt showed that one at least was well
enough to smoke.

The ambulance made its slow way through the featureless country, past
rubble heaps which had once been the habitations of men and women,
splintered trunks of poplar avenues, great excavations where shells of
an immense caliber had fallen long ago and the funnel shapes of which
were now overgrown with winter weeds.

Presently the ambulance turned on to the main road and five people
heaved a sigh of thankfulness, the sixth, he of the eloquent soles,
being without interest in anything.

The car with its sad burden passed smoothly along the broad level road,
such a road as had never been seen in France or in any other country
before the war, increasing its speed as it went. Red-capped policemen at
the crossroads held up the traffic--guns and mechanical transport,
mud-splashed staff cars and tramping infantry edged closer to the side
to let it pass.

Presently the car turned again, swept past a big aerodrome--the girl who
drove threw one quick glance