s but two stories
in height, save at the back, where a third story was run up for the
"cells" of the nurses and the other women engaged in the work. Ruth
ran up at once to her own tiny room to pack her handbag before she did
anything else.

The matron met her at the supply-room door when she came down. She was
a voluble, if not volatile, Frenchwoman of certain age.

"I dread having you go, Mademoiselle Ruth," she said, with her arm
about the girl. "I feel as though you were particularly in my care.
If anything should happen to you----"

"You surely would not be blamed," said Ruth, smiling. "Somebody must
go and why not I? Please send two orderlies to carry out these boxes.
This list calls for a lot of supplies. Surely the ambulance will be
filled."

Which was, indeed, the case. When she finally went downstairs, turning
the key of her store-room over to the matron, the ambulance body was
crowded with cases. The stretchers had been taken out before Charlie
Bragg drove in. Ruth must occupy the seat beside him in front.

She did not keep him waiting, but ran down with her bag and crept in
under the torn hood beside him. Several of the nurses stood in the
door to call good-bye after her. The sentinel in the courtyard stood
at attention as the car rolled out of the gate.

"Well," remarked Charlie Bragg, "I hope to thunder nothing busts,
that's all. You've never been to the front, have you?"

"No nearer than this," she confessed.

"Humph! You don't know anything about it."

"But is the hospital you are taking me to exactly at the front?"

"About five miles behind the first dressing station in this sector.
It's under the protection of a hill and is well camouflaged. But
almost any time the Boches may get its range, and then--good-night!"

With which remark he became silent, giving his strict attention to the
car and the road.

CHAPTER IV

UNDER FIRE

The day was fading into evening as the car went over the first ridge
and dropped out of sight of Clair and the sprawling hospital in which
Ruth Fielding had worked so many weeks.

She felt that she had grown old--and grown old rapidly--since coming to
her present work in France. She was the only American in that
hospital, for the United States Expeditionary Forces had only of late
taken over this sector of the battle line and no changes had been made
in the unity of the workers at Clair.

They all loved Ruth there, from the matron and the s