catch a glimpse of that careless gayety which the war had stolen from her.

In spite of Lucy’s troubled thoughts of Bob she found unlimited pleasure and consolation in Michelle’s company. Together the two worked as they had worked in the old days at Château-Plessis, to brighten the wounded men’s gloom. Only now they were among friends, with no sharp-eyed German surgeons on the watch. This thought somehow made Lucy almost resigned to being in Germany.

“We have to be here, instead of at home, but at any rate we can do what we please. It’s we who give the orders now,” she said to Michelle the morning of Christmas Day. A German farmer from beyond Badheim village was unloading supplies from his cart beside the hospital steps, and some of the convalescents with awakening interest were gathered around.

“Yes, the German trees can’t take us prisoner,” said Michelle with whimsical gravity, looking up at the great sighing pines closing in around them. “They are lovely—these forest trees. It was not the Germans, but God who planted them.”

Lucy felt again a touch of the enchantment that had caught her the first day she had entered the forest stillness. But at thought of the cottage in the clearing—now familiar ground—the face of the German woodcutter came before her once more to spoil the beauty. And yet there was nothing about the man, silent or quietly civil with the hospital workers, to make so definite an impression on her mind. She spoke her thoughts aloud.

“I can never see that Franz without remembering all the hatefulness of every German I’ve known in the past two years. While he’s about I can’t forget I am in Germany.”

“He does not forget it either,” was Michelle’s reply.

“Oh, I don’t think he bears us any grudge, Miss. He’s pleasant enough when we walk to the spring or the clearing,” remarked a young convalescent soldier sitting on the steps. “He’s old and soured by a hard life. Poor, too, to judge by the rags the kids wear.”

Michelle looked up at the soldier’s face, a boyish one, with pale cheeks rounding out with returning health and frank, merry gray eyes.

“Franz has not forgiven,” she said again. “Don’t you see he has not?”

The young soldier did not much care one way or the other. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed peaceably. “We’re going to have _some_ dinner,” he added, following 

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