had not gathered much gold, had at least been found fit to lessen some human misery. In that strength she grew confident.

[28]

[29]

As the fair spring days came back and green began to put out from the fields, the soldiers returned to their duty.

Now the killing became brisk again. The cellar ran full with its tally of scotched and crippled men. Dr. van der Helde was in command of the work. He was here and there and everywhere—in the trenches at daybreak, and gathering the harvest 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 minding his own business [30]in his own way. The Belgian army was a volunteer informal group of separate individuals. The Doctor was an individualist. So the days went by at a tense swift stride, stranger than anything in the story-books.

[30]

One morning the Doctor entered the cellar, with a troubled look on his face.

"I am forced to ask you to do something," began he, "and yet I hardly have the heart to tell you."

"What can the man be after," queried Hilda, "will you be wanting to borrow my hair brush to curry the cavalry with?"

"Worse than that," responded he; "I must ask you to cut off your beautiful hair."

"My hair," gasped Hilda, darting her hand to her head, and giving the locks an unconscious pat.

"Your hair," replied the Doctor. "It breaks my heart to make you do it, [31]but there's so much disease floating around in the air these days, that it is too great a risk for you to live with sick men day and night and carry all that to gather germs."

[31]

"I see," said Hilda in a subdued tone.

"One thing I will ask, that you give me a lock of it," he added quietly. She thought he was jesting with his request.

That afternoon she went to her cellar, and took the faithful shears which had severed so many bandages, and put them pitilessly at work on her crown of beauty. The hair fell to the ground in rich strands, darker by a little, and 

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