r-by stillness, while the
great guns boomed in the distance. The sudden activity on the front
must portend some important movement, or why should so many flying
machines be drawn toward this sector?

But in a minute she realized that this was not an aeroplane she heard.
Debouching into sight from the fringing thickets came a powerful motor
car, its forefront armored. She could barely see the head and
shoulders of the man behind the steering wheel.

Down the hill plunged the car, and the girl quickly stepped to the side
of the lane and waited for it to pass. The roar of its muffler was
deafening. In a moment she saw that the tonneau of the gray car was
filled with uniformed men.

They were officers in khaki, the insignia of their several grades
scarcely distinguishable against the dull color of their clothing. How
different from the gay uniforms of the French Army Corps, which, until
of late, the girl of the Red Cross had been used to seeing in this
locality.

Their faces were different, too. Gray, lean, hard-bitten faces, their
eyebrows so light and sparse that it seemed their eyes were hard stones
which never seemed to shift their straight-ahead gaze. Yet each man in
the tonneau and the orderly beside the driver on the front seat saluted
the Red Cross girl as she stood by the laneside.

In another half-minute the car had turned at the bottom of the hill and
was out of sight.

She sighed again as she plodded on. Now, indeed, was the spring gone
from her limbs and her expression was weary with a sadness that,
although not personal, was heavy upon her.

Her thought was with the aeroplane and the motor car and with the
thundering guns at the battle front, not many miles away. Yet she
hastened her steps up this grassy lane toward the chateau, in quite the
opposite direction.

The sudden stir of the military life of this sector portended something
unusual. An advance of the enemy or an attempt to make a drive upon
the Allies' works. In any case, down in the little, low-lying town
behind her, there might be increased need of hospital workers. She
must, before long, be once more at the hospital to meet the first
ambulances rolling in from the field hospitals or from the dressing
stations at the very front.

She reached the summit of the ridge, over which the lane passed to the
valley on the west side of the hill. The high arch of the gateway of
the chateau was in sight.

Coming from that direction, w