girl said.

She could not help loving the countess, no matter what some of the neighbors believed regarding her. But Ruth had her doubts about this son who was always in Paris and never at the front.

Henriette was too bashful to remain longer than Ruth, so she rose to go as well. The countess kissed her little neighbor and sent her favor to the girl's father and mother. Major Marchand accompanied the two visitors out of the chateau and toward the entrance gate, which Dolge had not opened.

"I sincerely hope we may meet again, Mademoiselle Fielding," the major said softly.

"That is not likely," she responded with soberness.

"No? Do you expect to leave Clair soon?"

"No," she said, and there was sharpness in her voice. "But I am much engaged in our hospital work—and you are not likely to be brought there, are you?"

Evidently he felt the bite in her question. He flushed and dropped his gaze. Her intimation was not to be mistaken. He seemed unlikely to be brought wounded to the hospital.

Before he could recover himself they were at the gate. Dolge opened the postern and the two girls stepped through, followed by the French officer. The young fellow in the American ambulance immediately hailed Ruth.

"Oh, I say, Miss Ruth!" he cried, "sorry to hunt you out this way, but you are needed down at the hospital."

"So I presume, or you would not have come for me, Charlie," she told him, smiling. "What is it?"

"Supplies needed for one of the field hospitals," he said. "And I tell you straight, Miss Ruth, they're in bad shape there. Not half enough help. The supply room of that station is all shot away—terrible thing."

"Oh, dear!" gasped Ruth. "Do you mean that the Germans have bombed it?"

"It wasn't an air raid. Yet it must have been done deliberately. They dropped a Jack Johnson right on that end of the hospital. Two orderlies hurt and the girl who ran the supply room killed. They want somebody to come right up there and arrange a new room and new stock."

"Oh! you won't go, Mademoiselle Ruth?" shrieked Henriette.

"It would be extremely dangerous," Major Marchand said. "Another shell might drop in the same place."

"Oh, we settled that battery. They tell me it's torn all to pieces. When our doughboys heard the Red Cross girl was killed they were wild. The gunners smashed the German position to smithereens. But it was awful for her, poor thing.

"The station needs supplies dreadfully, just the same," added Charlie Bragg. "And somebody who knows about 'em. I told the médicin-chef I'd speak to you myself, Miss Ruth——"

"I'll go with you. They can get along at Clair without me for a few days, I am sure."

"Good," returned Charlie, and moved over a little to make room on the seat for her. Major Marchand said:

"There must be something big going on over there. Is it a general advance, Monsieur?"

Ruth flashed him a look and laid her fingers gently on Charlie Bragg's arm. The ambulance driver was by no means dull.

"I can't say what is on foot," he said to the French officer. "I should think you might know more about it than I do," he added.

His engine began to rattle the somewhat infirm car. Charlie winked openly at Henriette, who laughed at him. The car began to move. Major Marchand stood beside the road and bowed profoundly again to Ruth—that bow from the hips. It was German, that bow; it proved that his military education had not been wholly gained in France.

She could not help doubting the loyalty of Major Henri Marchand as well as that of his older brother, the present count. Their mother might be the loveliest lady in the world, but there was something wrong with her sons.

Here the younger one was idling away his time about the chateau, or in Paris, so it was said, while the count had suddenly disappeared and was not to be found at all! Neither had been engaged in any dangerous work on the battle front. It was all very strange.

The bouncing ambulance was swiftly out of sight of the chateau gate. Ruth sighed.

"Say! isn't there anybody at all who can go with those supplies they're in need of but you, Miss Ruth?" inquired Charlie Bragg, looking sideways at her.

"No. I am alone at Clair, you know quite well, Charlie. The supplies are entirely under my care. I can teach somebody else over there at the bombed hospital in a short time how to handle the things. Meanwhile, the matron—or somebody else—can do my work here. It would not do to send a greenhorn to such a busy hospital as this must be to which you are taking me."

"Busy! You said it!" observed the driver. "You'll see a lot of rough stuff, Miss Ruth; and you haven't been used to that. What'll Tom Cameron say?" and he grinned suddenly.

Ruth laughed a little. "Every tub must stand on its own bottom, Aunt Alvirah says. I must do my duty."

"It'll be a mighty dangerous trip. I'm not fooling you. There are places on the road—— Well! the Boches are all stirred up and they are likely to drop a shell or two almost anywhere, you know."

"You came through it, didn't you?" she demanded pluckily.

"By the skin of my teeth," he returned.

"You're trying to scare me."

"Honest to goodness I'm not. They sent me over for the supplies and somebody to attend to them."

"Well?" she said inquiringly, as Charlie ceased to speak.

"But I didn't think you'd have to make the trip. Isn't there anybody else, Miss Ruth?" and the young fellow was quite earnest now.

"Nobody," she said firmly. "No use telling me anything more, Charlie. For the very reason the trip is dangerous, you wouldn't want me to put it off on somebody else, would you?"

He said no more. The car rattled down into the little town, with its crooked, paved streets and its countless smells. Clair was the center of a farming community, and, in some cases, the human inhabitants and the dumb beasts lived very close together.

The hospital sprawled over considerable ground. It was but two stories in height, save at the back, where a third story was run up for the "cells" of the nurses and the other women engaged in the work. Ruth ran up at once to her own tiny room to pack her handbag before she did anything else.

The matron met her at the supply-room door when she came down. She was a voluble, if not volatile, Frenchwoman of certain age.

"I dread having you go, Mademoiselle Ruth," she said, with her arm about the girl. "I feel as though you were particularly in my care. If anything should happen to you——"

"You surely would not be blamed," said Ruth, smiling. "Somebody must go and why not I? Please send two orderlies to carry out these boxes. This list calls for a lot of supplies. Surely the ambulance will be filled."

Which was, indeed, the case. When she finally went downstairs, turning the key of her store-room over to the matron, the ambulance body was crowded with cases. The stretchers had been taken out before Charlie Bragg drove in. Ruth must occupy the seat beside him in front.

She did not keep him waiting, but ran down with her bag and crept in under the torn hood beside him. Several of the nurses stood in the door to call good-bye after her. The sentinel in the courtyard stood at attention as the car rolled out of the gate.

"Well," remarked Charlie Bragg, "I hope to thunder nothing busts, that's all. You've never been to the front, have you?"

"No nearer than this," she confessed.

"Humph! You don't know anything about it."

"But is the hospital you are taking me to exactly at the front?"

"About five miles behind the first dressing station in this sector. It's under the protection of a hill and is well camouflaged. But almost any time the Boches may get its range, and then—good-night!"

With which remark he became silent, giving his strict attention to the car and the road.

CHAPTER IV