Young Hilda at the Wars

seful persons. Will power is grown out yonder as one of the crops. She had a will of her own and her eye showed a blue cerulean. Her hair was a bright yellow, lighting up a

s and let it fall in its plenty to the waist. Then its changing lights came out in a rippling play of color, and the winds had their way with it. It was then youth's battleflag unfurled, and strong men were ready to follow. It was such a vivid possession that strangers were always suspicious of it, till they knew the girl, or saw it in its unshackled freedom. She

place for her in whatever was going her way. But she did want to see what war was like. Her experience had always been of the gentler order. Canoeing and country walks, and a flexible wrist in playing had given her only a meagre training for the stresses of the modern battlefiel

the Women's Crisis League. To their office she took her way, determined to enlist for Belgium. Mrs. Bracher was i

on't want to go back to the Studio Club in New York, as long as th

as that, as well as a motor cyclist and a woman of p

There must be lots to do for an untrained person, who is strong and used

leaving for Belgium with a motor-ambulance Corps," she said, "but h

id Hilda, "that

go with him to the front. I hope he will accept you, but there are many a

plications of psychotherapy to raging militants and weary society leaders. He was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare gift of intuitive insight. He,

. We have a little corner in Scotland where several strains were merged, and the men were finer and the women fairer than the a

. "That means competition, and then you will

te impossible. But if you care to do it, keep in touch with me for the

the "Boots" in her lodging-house. She call

unawakened London to forlorn Belgium, they felt lost. How to take hold, they did

ter, even in a land of astounding spectacles, than the sight of the rescuing ambulances rolling out to the wounded of a morning, loaded to the gunwale with charming women and several men. "Where will they put the wounded?" was the query that sprang to every lip that gaped at their passing. There was room for everybody but wounded. Fortunately there were few wounded in those early days

s thirty-one years of age, with a thoughtful but kindly face. His eye had pleasant lights in it, and a twinkle of humor. His voice was low and even-toned. He lifted the wounded in from the trenches, dressed their wounds, and sent them back to the base hospitals. He was regiment

st souls," he said to them; "let

s that lay burrowed in the wet earth, all the way from the Baths of Nieuport-on-the-Sea down through the shelled villages of the Ramskappele-Dix

he pad, and roll the cotton. She learned to cut away the heavy army blue cloth to reach the spurting artery. She built the fire that heated the soup. She distributed the clean warm socks

ed his staff into shell fire, week-days and Sundays, and all with a fine unconsciousness that anything unusual was singing and breaking around the path of t

it coming," said Mrs. Bracher after one of

re long chances we are takin

fleeting visit, before he was ordered t

s he was saying good-bye, "you and your staff are going to be

It was doubtful i

ld of Smith, a London boy

orning. It sounds like guns in that direction.

hat," she said with

ncovered head. Where the men went, there went she. For the modern woman has put aside fear along with t

a Mediterranean sail, with red crosses on the sides to ward off shells, and a huge r

felt all time was wasted that was not spent where

at that piece of road ahead, sir, you will see that it's b

resh spring morning. There was a tang in the air, and sense of awakening life in the ground, whi

th which it breaks its casing and releases the pattering bullets. It unfolded itself in a littl

g. The thought of personal peril never entered her head. The vers

h, dew, all

in your f

ll me, save

me, who c

s observations of the enemy to a soldier in the rafters, who passed them to another on the ladder, who dropped them to another

kerke. And now Smith let out his engine, for it is not wise to delay along a road that is in clear sig

van der Helde, in the little group be

e left in the town when the bombardment started. They have been under shell fire for four days, and their nerves are gone. They are paralyzed with fright, and cannot wa

re here for," sa

etly. "Shall we not leave the lad

he replied

r Helde ju

old of an army car to help you out, all thi

elgian; "the military considered it

Stumps of building still stood, blackened down their surface, as if lightning had visited them. Wire that had once been telegraph and telephone crawled over the piles of w

iece of twisted metal, the size of a

g," returned Dr

re down the long corridor were seated the aged poor of Dixmude. Not one of the patient creatures was younger than seventy. Some looked to be over eighty. White-haired men and women, bent over, shaking from head to foot, muttering. Most of them looked down

ly but kindly, "come, old man. We ar

ed shook his head and settled to th

van der Helde, "yo

t to the car. Two old women and one more aged man they carried from that

back?" asked Dr

und a place for them,"

the town. The firing was intermittent, now. Two miles back at the

ter's fine," cried

" asked o

ned. "There are twenty-six old people in St

officer, and streamed into the doomed town and on to the yard o

oined her there, and they had luncheon together out of the ample stores under the seat of the ambulance. Up to this da

he gallant doctor, "to see such hair i

u like it," r

Doctor, "I love it. It brings good luck,

ard that,"

their own, the Doctor slept in security ten kilometers back of the trenche

Mrs. Bracher, thundering into the room, like a charge of cavalr

ery pleasant, too. He has been working in Dixmude, but no one is there any more, and he wants to start a new post. He w

l, Pervyse is nothing but a rubbish heap. They'v

wound. They are full of colds from all the wet weather we had last month. They haven't half enough to

Mrs. Bracher. "How

cDonnell. She was the silent member of a noisy group,

tell us. Will you go to Pervyse and

o," sai

ll. A once lovely village had been made into a black waste. On the main streets, not one house had been left unwrecked. They found a roomy cellar, under

liot, Prince Alexander of Teck, Generals, the Queen of the Belgians, labor leaders-so ran the visiting list. The sorrow that was Belgium had become fam

re was such goodness in human nature. Who was she ever to be impatient again, when these men in extremity could remember to thank her. Here in this worst of the evils, this horror of war, men were manifesting a humanity, a consideration, at a higher level than she felt she had ever shown it in happy surroundings in a peaceful land. Hilda won the sense, which was to be of abiding good to her, that at last she had justified her existence. She, too, was now helping to continue tha

green began to put out from the fields

vest of wounded in the fields after nightfall. Sometimes he would be away for three days on end. He would run up and down the lines for seven miles, watching the work. The Belgian nation was a race of individualists, each man merrily

tered the cellar, with a

mething," began he, "and yet I h

ilda, "will you be wanting to borrow m

d he; "I must ask you to cu

g her hand to her head, and giv

s so much disease floating around in the air these days, that it is too great a ri

d Hilda in a

a lock of it," he added quietly. She t

h it rested. Then she gathered it up into one of the aged illustrated papers that had drifted out to the post from kind friends in Furnes. She wrapped it tightly inside the double page picture of laughing soldiers, celebrating Christmas in the trenches. And she c

d at sigh

m sorry,

d it off by a little flaunt of her head

eep a lock for

oking," sh

ook her head, and went down into the cellar. Th

later, he ente

up the line to Nieuport. I'll be back in the morning."

r brings good

k's gone," r

hasn't," h

suggested Mrs. Bracher, next day, "a

einforcements had just come in, all their old frie

a. There were whole days when she did not notice t

t's that six-inch gun over behind the farm-house, trying out these new men. T

rds, and came on a knot of soldiers

ooking at?" exclaimed

Probably work for u

he outstretched form on the grass ban

o horrible. His face is gone. A shell must have taken it a

p of men about the bod

ssly, as a woman will who is inte

repeated after him. "I te

ement came from the s

nd," called one of th

he very lightest a

octor," H

the dead man. It was so vivid in the morn

ould bring him lu

D W

hing had been done to my brother, the Belgian, by my brother, the German. He had sent a sp