stful men could be--especially Germans. One--he
was a major and one of the nobility--stayed here overnight. He
promised to take me back to Germany when the war was over--which would
be in a few weeks. They were to be in Paris in a few days then.

"He promised I would be proud when I became all German. France, he
said, would never be a separate country again. For most of the
people--my people--he said, were weaklings. They would emigrate to
America and the remaining would intermarry with Germans. So all France
would become Germany.

"When he was awake, he was full of bombast, that major! When he was
asleep he snored outrageously. Ugh! For the first time in my life I
hate anybody," declared Mother Gervaise, shuddering.

"But he paid me well for his lodging. And his men paid me for the
soup. They marched past steadily for two days. Then they were gone
and the country all about was peaceful for a week. At the end of that
time they come back."

Here Mother Gervaise smiled, but it was a victorious smile. Her face
lighted up and her eyes shone again.

"Pellmell back they came," she repeated. "It was a retreat. Many had
lost their guns and their packs. I had no soup for them. I said I had
lost my poulets and all. But it was not so. I had them hidden.

"The orderly of my major came in here, threw up his hands, and shouted:
'No Paris! No Paris!' And then he tramped on with his fellows. They
chopped the trees and blew up many houses. But mine was marked, as the
Boches did in those first days: 'These are good people. Let them be.'
So I was not molested," finished Mother Gervaise.

"Now, sit you down, Mademoiselle, at the table. Here where I have
spread a napkin. The ragout----

"Bless us and save us!" she added, as a sudden roar of voices sounded
outside the cot and the throaty rattle of a motor engine. "Whom have
we here?"

She went to the door and flung it open. Ruth hesitated at the chair in
which she had been about to be seated. Outside she saw bunched several
uniformed men. They were hilariously pushing into the cottage,
thrusting the excited Mother Gervaise aside.

CHAPTER VI

THE MYSTERY

Ruth Fielding's rising fear was quenched when she saw the faces of the
newcomers more clearly. They were those of young men belonging to the
American Expeditionary Forces, as their uniforms betrayed. And they
were teasing Mother Gervaise in the free and easy way of American youth.

No