es fluttered back to freedom.

* * * * *

Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised
hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners. To one of the small rooms
at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a
self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the
only way she knew.

O Sana San's heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her
soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be
allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand. Her mother, in whom
smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a
fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after
day to the hospital.

The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the
last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her
visits became a matter of course.

And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for
her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of
gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when
the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he
turned his head to listen for the patter of the little _tabi_ that was
sure to sound along the hall.

Sometimes she would bring her picture-books and read him wonderful
stories in words he did not understand, and show him the pictures of
Momotaro, who was born out of a peach and who grew up to be so strong
and brave that he went to the Ogres' Island and carried off all their
treasures,--caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels
which made the tide come or go, coral and amber and tortoise-shell,--and
all these things the little Peach Boy took back to his kind old foster
mother and father, and they all lived happily forever after. And in the
telling O Sana Man's voice would thrill, and her almond eyes grow
bright, while her slender brown finger pointed out the figures on the
gaily colored pages.

Sometimes she would sing to him, in soft minor strains, of the beauty of
the snow on the pine-trees, or the wonders of Fuji-San.

And he would pucker his white lips and try to whistle the accompaniment,
to her great amusement and delight.

Many were the treasures she brought forth from the depths of her long
sleeves, and many were the devices she contrived to amuse him. The most
ambitious achievement was a miniature garden in a wooden box--a
wo