to try to
stay this impulse as to try to put out the burning of a prairie when the
wind blows.

The ambulance stopped with a jerk. Something was wrong with the engine.
The driver climbed down and threw back the hood, and, unnoticed, the nurse
slipped down and passed him. When he had finished his tinkering, Sheila
was fifty rods away across the meadow.

"Here, you, you come back!" shouted the driver.

For answer Sheila doubled her speed.

The driver watched her, uncertain what to do. A shell whizzed from beyond
the barrage and burst a hundred yards from the nurse. The shock threw her,
but she was up in an instant, her course changed toward some deserted
trenches. The driver hesitated no longer. He climbed back and started the
engine.

"No use tacklin' them kind," he remarked to the empty seat beside him.
"She'll get there or she won't--but she won't turn back."

It was nightfall when Sheila came up with what she had chosen to call "her
division." She intended to possess it in spite of the commander. An
outpost sentry challenged what he thought a wraith. His tongue fumbled the
words, "Oh, Gawd! it's a woman!"

"Yes. Will you pass her? Lots to do."

He looked at the red cross on her arm and smiled foolishly. "You bet there
is! Sure I'll pass you."

She came up with the first battalion, bivouacked under a shell-riven
ridge.

"A woman!" The first boy whispered it, and the exclamation rippled on to
the next and the next like wind in dry leaves. Remembering the exodus of
the morning, the nurse knew if she was to stay she must prove her need and
prove it quickly. Her voice was as business-like as in the old San days.

"Dressing-station? Company's surgeon? Wounded? Doesn't matter which, only
get me some work."

A hand slipped out of the darkness and caught her elbow. "This way, lady,"
and she was drawn along the protecting shelter of the ridge. After rods of
stumbling she stumbled down irrational stairs into the same dugout she had
left that morning. She was almost as surprised as the two surgeons.

"You're a fool," muttered Griggs. "Wait till they order me back. I'll not
be crying for purgatory twice."

The chief smiled. "I reckon you got that S O S call I've been sending out
all day. We need help like sixty. Bichloride's under that basin. We'll be
ready for you when you've washed up. Night ahead--" His words trailed off
into an incoherent chuckling. He was wondering how the girl had managed
it. He was wonderi