The Red Cross Barge

ish church, when Jeanne Rouannès entered it, was already transformed into a hospital ward; and, as she came slowly back to normal con

but through medieval glass which the Great Revolution had spared, the sun shone

had rested were now serving as the base of the principal operating table. She could not help wondering in her ignorance why all these elaborate preparations had been made, for the onl

no disagreeables you befall. The Herr Stabsarzt is a good man-perhaps have you of him heard

acled German, who greeted her courteously with the words, uttered in a French as

perceptibly more cordial. 'She does not look strong enough for the labours which will presently begin. You must watch over the poor bereaved one,' he said kindly; 'she looks a truly

ing and humane Octavius Mott! The Herr Stabsarzt, looking at him from out his shrewd little eyes, saw something in the plain se

ldings and stables which had escaped the notice of the marauders-anywhere to be free of hateful and terrifying presences. They hoped, poor wretches, with that curious hope and faith in the future, which in the French

among the sated German soldiery. The French batteries, hidden away to the right of Valoise, had evidently obtained trustworthy information from within the town, for their attack was carefully dir

so exciting was the artillery duel, that women, and even children, crowded into the streets and, with upturned f

me pouring in. They were brought in every kind of vehicle, from the luxurious motor a

and place still had to be found for them. After the beds had all been filled, the stone floor, hastily covered with stacks of straw, had to serve as restin

geons there brought to their terrible tasks. In whatever part of the church she happened to be, whatever the duty in which she was engaged, during those hours of horror and strain, when all the miraculous resources of yo

and his dressers require had been used up, and that though, by the forethought of Herr Doktor Max Keller, all the clean,

d at first the fact had filled the French Red Cro

en came first as a matter of course, and the best was naturally reserved for them. They were skilful, and as humane

or the most part outside and unattended; and she was filled with repugnance, even horror, for all these Germans, both the wounded and the whole, who lay and stood about her. As far as was poss

ed hand in hers, and he murmured 'Mutter,' in a voice full of agonised longing and entreaty. From that moment Jeanne Rouannès no longer made, even in her inmost heart, any d

und Valoise-were the injured townspeople, the old women and the little children who became unwitting targets for the

ps because the thought of any personal danger was so far from them both, during those strange and terrible days, the Herr Doktor Max Kel

rage and disgust when shown that the curiously shaped steel arrow which had fatally injured a little child, had

her, in after days, was the effect produced by a fragment of shell which happened to unseal the top of a hydrant. Just out of reach of

y in a clear sky, the air was filled with a soft, luminous haze which rose from the river, and the fierce fighting in