alking easily, yet quickly, was the lean
military figure of a young man who switched the roadside weed stalks
with a light cane. He looked up quickly as the girl approached, and
his rather somber face lighted as though the sight of her gave him
pleasure.

Yet his gaze was respectful. He was handsome, keenly intelligent
looking and not typically French, although he was dressed in the
uniform of a branch of the French service, wearing a major's chevrons.
As the Red Cross girl came nearer, he put his heels together smartly,
removed his kepi, and bowed stiffly from the waist. It was not a
Frenchman's bow.

The girl responded with a quiet bend of her head, but she passed him by
without giving him any chance to speak. He followed her only with his
eyes--and that but for a moment; then he went on down the lane, his
stride growing momentarily longer until he passed from view.

A cry from the direction of the broad gateway ahead next aroused the
attention of the girl in the Red Cross uniform. She looked up to see
another girl running to meet her.

This was a short, rather plump French girl, whose eyes shone with
excitement, and who ran with hands outstretched to meet those of the
Red Cross girl. The latter was some years the older.

"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth! Mademoiselle Ruth Fielding!" cried the French
girl eagerly. "Did you meet him? Ah-h!"

Ruth Fielding laughed as she watched the mobile face of her friend.
The latter's cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes rolled. She
was all aquiver with the emotion that possessed her.

"Did you see him?" she repeated, as their hands met and Ruth stooped to
press her lips to the full ones of her friend.

"Did I see whom, you funny Henriette?" asked Ruth.

"Am I fon-nay?" demanded Henriette Dupay, in an English which she
evidently struggled to make clear. "Then am I not nice?"

"You are both funny and nice," declared Ruth Fielding, hugging the
girl's plump body close to her own, as they walked on slowly to the
chateau gate. "Tell me. Who was I supposed to see? A motor full of
officers passed me, and an aeroplane over my head----"

"Oh, non! non!" cried Henriette. Then, in awe: "Major Marchand."

"Oh! Is that Major Marchand?"

"But yes, Mademoiselle Ruth. Ah-h! Such a man--such a figure! He is
Madame the Countess' younger son."

"So I understand," Ruth said. "He is safely engaged in Paris, is he
not?" and her tone implied much.

"Ye-es. So it is s