t us word to be ready for another four hundred
to-night"; and the twinkle died out of her good eyes.

Her expectations were to be dreadfully surpassed; for, as we learned
a fortnight later from a three column _communique,_ the scene we had
assisted at was no less than the first act of the successful assault
on the high-perched village of Vauquois, a point of the first
importance to the Germans, since it masked their operations to the
north of Varennes and commanded the railway by which, since
September, they have been revictualling and reinforcing their army
in the Argonne. Vauquois had been taken by them at the end of
September and, thanks to its strong position on a rocky spur, had
been almost impregnably fortified; but the attack we looked on at
from the garden of Clermont, on Sunday, February 28th, carried the
victorious French troops to the top of the ridge, and made them
masters of a part of the village. Driven from it again that night,
they were to retake it after a five days' struggle of exceptional
violence and prodigal heroism, and are now securely established
there in a position described as "of vital importance to the
operations." "But what it cost!" Soeur Gabrielle said, when we saw
her again a few days later.

II

The time had come to remember our promise and hurry away from
Clermont; but a few miles farther our attention was arrested by the
sight of the Red Cross over a village house. The house was little
more than a hovel, the village--Blercourt it was called--a mere
hamlet of scattered cottages and cow-stables: a place so easily
overlooked that it seemed likely our supplies might be needed there.

An orderly went to find the _medecin-chef_, and we waded after him
through the mud to one after another of the cottages in which, with
admirable ingenuity, he had managed to create out of next to nothing
the indispensable requirements of a second-line ambulance:
sterilizing and disinfecting appliances, a bandage-room, a pharmacy,
a well-filled wood-shed, and a clean kitchen in which "tisanes" were
brewing over a cheerful fire. A detachment of cavalry was quartered
in the village, which the trampling of hoofs had turned into a great
morass, and as we picked our way from cottage to cottage in the
doctor's wake he told us of the expedients to which he had been put
to secure even the few hovels into which his patients were crowded.
It was a complaint we were often to hear repeated along this line of
the fr