the
women have faltered under the same test.

Brisson was the philosophical stoic of the quartette. Estridge groused
sometimes. Palla, when she thought herself unnoticed, camouflaged her
face in her furs and cried now and then. And occasionally Ilse
Westgard tried the patience of the others by her healthy capacity for
unfeigned laughter--sometimes during danger-laden and inopportune
moments, and once in the shocking imminence of death itself.

As, for example, in a vile little village, full of vermin and typhus,
some hunger-crazed peasants, armed with stolen rifles and ammunition,
awoke them where they lay on the straw of a stable, cursed them for
aristocrats, and marched them outside to a convenient wall, at the
foot of which sprawled half a dozen blood-soaked, bayoneted and
bullet-riddled landlords and land owners of the district.

And things had assumed a terribly serious aspect when, to their
foolish consternation, the peasants discovered that their purloined
cartridges did not fit their guns.

Then, in the very teeth of death, Ilse threw back her blond head and
laughed. And there was no mistaking the genuineness of the girl's
laughter.

Some of their would-be executioners laughed too;--the hilarity spread.
It was all over; they couldn't shoot a girl who laughed that way. So
somebody brought a samovar; tea was boiled; and they all went back to
the barn and sat there drinking tea and swapping gossip and singing
until nearly morning.

That was a sample of their narrow escapes. But Brisson's only comment
before he went to sleep was that Estridge would probably owe him a
dollar within the next twenty-four hours.

They had a hair-raising time in Helsingfors. On one occasion, German
officers forced Palla's door at night, and the girl became ill with
fear while soldiers searched the room, ordering her out of bed and
pushing her into a corner while they ripped up carpets and tore the
place to pieces in a swinishly ferocious search for "information."

But they did nothing worse to her, and, for some reason, left the
hotel without disturbing Brisson, whose room adjoined and who sat on
the edge of his bed with an automatic in each hand--a dangerous
opportunist awaiting events and calmly determined to do some
recruiting for hell if the huns harmed Palla.

She never knew that. And the worst was over now, and the Scandinavian
border not far away. And in twenty-four hours they were over--Brisson
impatient to get his pa