She was looking rather plain and tired and was unusually nervous, but this it would have been difficult to guess from her quiet manner.

The country through which she passed was one of queer contrasts. There were many houses that had been destroyed by fire, but others that had not even been touched. In these places people were evidently making an effort to lead an ordinary, everyday existence. But they were all listless and discouraged. Eugenia thought that the children must have forgotten how to play in this last year, when their land had suffered such sorrow.

She wished that she might gather them all together in one great circle that should[Pg 37] extend all over Belgium and set them to laughing and playing once more.

[Pg 37]

However, Eugenia soon left the populated part of the neighborhood. She and her old horse wound their way along a stream and then came to a gate. There was no house in sight from the gate, but just as if she had been there before, Eugenia got down and opened it. Then she tied her horse behind a clump of trees inside the woods and with her bag of nursing supplies in her hand crept along on foot up a narrow path. Every once and a while she would stop and glance cautiously about her. But no one was in sight to be interested in her proceedings. Moreover, where could she be going? She seemed to have some end in view, and yet there was no place or person in the vicinity. Any one familiar with the neighborhood could have explained that Eugenia must be bent upon an utterly ridiculous errand. There was an old house about half a mile farther along, but it had been deserted long before the Germans had ever set foot on conquered Belgium.

A tragedy had occurred in the house[Pg 38] ten or fifteen years before, and ever afterwards the place had been supposed to be haunted.

[Pg 38]

No one believed such nonsense, of course, since intelligent persons do not believe in ghosts. But the house was too far from the village, and was in too bad a state of repair to be a desirable residence. Indeed, there were dozens of reasons why, after its owners moved, no one else cared to rent it.

Moreover, the house had also escaped the interest of the German invaders of the land. So why in the world should it be of so great interest to Eugenia that she was making this lonely pilgrimage, without taking any one of the three Red Cross girls into her confidence?

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