ard. Monsieur Mars was being
delirious in English, and the doctors and nurses understood too little
of the language to know whether he were merely babbling or pouring forth
important information.

There Eagle lay in his narrow, white bed, clean and pale, with his head
swathed in bandages, a very different man from the grimy, bloodstained
vision that had flashed on me a few hours before. The merest stranger
who had ever seen Captain March would have deserved no credit for
recognizing him now.

The nurses waited eagerly for me to translate his mutterings; but he
only mumbled again and again, "It's all over, all over!"

If I could guess at a sad hidden meaning for the words, it was one which
need not be handed on to others; and I proved so broken a reed as a
translator that I expected to receive marching orders, right-about face.
Strange to say, however, though his eyes were half closed and he seemed
to see nothing, know nothing that went on around him, after I had spoken
in a low tone to his nurse Eagle stopped muttering. For a moment he
appeared to listen, and then with a deep sigh as if of relief from pain
or some heavy anxiety, the half-open eyelids closed. The slight frown
which had drawn his brows together slowly faded away. He had the air of
being at rest.

"One would almost fancy," said the head nurse, who had been watching the
scene, speaking thoughtfully when she had beckoned me away from the
bedside, "that this brave monsieur recognized your voice, Mademoiselle."

Then I took heart of grace and did what I had told Tony I meant to do. I
said that I had met Monsieur Mars in England and America. I had
recognized him at once when the Red Cross men brought him into the
hospital, but I had said nothing of this at the time, because I had felt
that it would be considered unimportant.

"On the contrary, Mademoiselle," answered that adorable woman, "it is of
the _greatest_ importance. This heroic monsieur has saved us from death.
If there is anything, little or big, which we can do for him in return,
how gladly will we do it! Your voice has soothed him in his
unconsciousness. Who knows what your presence may do when consciousness
comes back? Why, it would be like throwing away an elixir to waste you
after this in the ward above. You are from now on promoted as assistant
nurse to our hero."

She was a stout, plain person, with bulgy eyes and a pink end to her
nose, but I saw her as the most beautiful woman the worl