The Red Cross Girl

ernment with the Russian army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his part in the invasion

on Gottlieb had been Carl Schultz, the head-wait

orrespondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell

not in the least disturbed, for I have

Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neith

going tugs, and despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of Norfolk somewhere between the Wash a

r separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: "I suggest your Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, an

mirrors and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant returned, instead of finding

t laughed go

cy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along the be

right, too

t. His guests were his nephew, young Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university. After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights" week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given

m three years and I can testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy un

sented Birr

arrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a temp

en. The country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged Herbert. "Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country sit up, something that will sen

what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's the id

ish battle-ship with your face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like an a

im, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside the open wi

t is risky, that will make the country sit up, that ought t

rt nodded; Birre

Herbert impatiently. "HE n

and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen if German soldiers appea

ew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would fall

Ford by the arm. "How?" he demanded breathlessly. "

I came across a lot of German uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out how p

plan?" interr

just before da

Herbert. "Are

rivate invasion! I'm letting you boys in on the grou

s glanced at each other in

, sir," said Birrell gra

the other and then slapped the table with his ope

-Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you

shoulders and, rising,

eerfully. "Come on, Ford," he said. "We'll

car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across the marsh

ad-waiter-for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it,

ed; "which of you boys has b

him with disfavor; until, for just an instant, his ey

obile Club asked us to mark down petrol stations.

om the windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expo

st the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull of thousands of motionless, silent figu

age Carl Schultz

. There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fi

eir shillings gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again allowed his eyes to sweep the

ed his bicycle and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman o

igh, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new apart,

m this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside

post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of th

tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above him on the sky-line of t

German, "sleeping at their posts. Th

ll of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were unfamiliar, but in

ed. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo

r," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but

addressed hi

e of this villag

e village upward of eighty years,

een any of

ffort of memory Mr. Sh

ights, and remain indoors. We have taken this village.

," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May

him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk,

rs halted behind

had to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all going

still open," said Fo

he sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two fishermen rem

to come tumbling into a respectable place? None of you

ruders, in deep guttural acc

u are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and y

e soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one sh

ered the tall G

feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then sile

for a while!" said Ford

d impressive figure. His helmet and his measured tread

Herbert. "He must see us, b

through an opening between two houses. Five minutes later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into Stiffkey's main st

ed in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off towa

d him promptly; "I saw them. It'

orials," objected the chauffe

dusk, the constable made

ngly; "skylarking maybe, but meaning no harm.

eath the canvas

illy joke, or it's serious, and you ought to re

ble consid

at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you, gentlem

n in the rear of the ca

f Stiffkey, Herbert e

couldn't wake these people with dynam

ow," chanted the chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we

him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road-and in the light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across

ne what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be

ntries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud. As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained to Ford, were intended to give "verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave young Bradshaw

any-any soldier

to catch us, but when I saw who they were, I

ny-and

egiment. We didn't know then they were Germans, not until

tleman. "I happen to be in command o

car forward, p

t to warn every coast town in Norfolk. You ta

the night Ford spo

ant is a live wire, some one with imagination, some

id Birrell, "as though

ers" in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to th

about Germans?" he

"They've landed two regiments between here and Wells.

tor refused

ll come!"

en off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the Germans back! Gangway," he

him a man's voice rose with a roar like a rocket

brought the car to a ha

lantly. "They don't believe us. We've got to

id Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if

s it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Befor

"Where is our next stop? As I said

s electric torch a

here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit t

aw three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an an?mic, pale-face

u are a prisoner," he said. "We take over this o

e, the hand of the boy operator moved across the table to

t!" he growle

, the boy lifted himsel

pay?" he stammere

the face of the

get out," F

e invader, the boy pulled open the drawer of the t

!" cri

l fell upon the boy's shoulders, Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the tower. Bi

Then, with his left arm raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward across the table, in

laces in the car, Herbert t

said, "was that what we

d that gun half down my throat. I can ta

said Herbert, "We are now scheduled to give exhibitio

the Boy Scouts would club us to death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely Coa

consulte

ed just the other side of Morston. And," he

as now quite dark. There were no stars, nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and

me to an a

"I feel a strange reluctance about showing

t the clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles o

t the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the cabin was open and from it a sha

ight," whispered Ford, "And then, after we are

last scene," g

ith emphasis, "We must

bursting roar, a flash, many ro

us!" yell

falling bodies that followed his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he emptied into

h on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the last ve

d to Herbert?

aw him last he was diving over the cliff

being dead, I am severely wounded. Every time he f

was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water, and clad simply in a s

rm," he cried, "can have mine. I left it in the

inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty souls an

said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't cr

or practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder," exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if yo

d the worst might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably were the men to whom the officer referred. He

keeping on to give warning you were taking chances. I

and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car through lanes of armed men. They packed each sid

ave turned out to a man!"

h five regiments already, and there are as many more in t

only where you see the ca

ted to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that

nds of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon, the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel

general," whisper

, baron," replied

in time to war

, the older

s will be explained as manoeuvres. And," added the general, "The English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept that expla

hree columns and a wood-cut of Ford that was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: "Lester Ford, ou

ditorial in The Times of Lon

t of the New York Republic. These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads infested by the Germ

g men sat at dinner on

rbert, "tell my uncle that we three,

ow know there were two hundred thousand inva

n advance party landed too soon and gave the show away. If we talk," he argued, "We'll get credit for a success