among other things that prisoners be allowed to receive money, letters and packages from their friends. These last must of course be carefully censored, and yet they keep life from growing unendurably dull. Think of long weeks and months going past with never a line from the outside world! Barbara studied the faces of the imprisoned men closely. With all her experiences as a war nurse it chanced she had never before seen any number of prisoners. Now and then a few of them had passed her, being marched along the Belgian roads to the measure of the German goose step. [Pg 113] [Pg 113] Now she managed to bow to the men resting under the tree and they returned her greeting in the friendliest fashion. Every Red Cross nurse is a soldier's friend. Yet in the character of an ordinary girl Barbara would have been almost as cordially received. She looked so natural and so human. Somehow one recalled once again the vision of "the girl one had left behind." But Barbara was not to linger inside the prison yard. As the day was nearing its close the men who had been working in the fields were to return. The German commandant wished Dr. Mason to see how well his prisoners looked. Surrounding the prison was a high stone wall. In the rear of this yard was a wide gate which could be swung back on hinges, allowing a half dozen men to be herded through at the same time. So Dr. Mason and Barbara were escorted outside the prison wall and given chairs to await the marching past of the soldiers. Barbara sat down gratefully enough. But when five or ten minutes passed and[Pg 114] nothing happened she found herself growing bored. Dr. Mason could not talk to her. The German officer was discoursing so earnestly in his own language that it was plain the American physician had to devote all his energies to the effort to understand him. [Pg 114] So by and by, when neither of the men was observing her, Barbara got up and strolled a few paces away. There was little to see except the stretch of much-traveled road. The fields where the prisoners were at work were more than a mile away. But the girl's attention was arrested by an unmistakable sound. It was the noise of the imprisoned soldiers being marched back to their jail. The tread was slow and dead, without animation or life. It was as if the men had been engaged in tasks in which
Prev.
Back
Top