and cried until the tears ran down between her fingers. Mr. Leslie let her alone for a while, but presently she felt his arm steal about her shaking shoulders, and raising her wet face she faltered, suddenly ashamed, “I guess I’m a coward, Cousin Henry, but I couldn’t help it.”

“I guess you’re not a coward,” was the quick answer, and, as he had done months before, the day he promised to go in search of Bob in prison, Mr. Leslie sat silent and patted his little cousin’s shoulder, with a tender, comforting hand. His thoughts went back to his own little daughter, whom Lucy’s unselfish care and comradeship had restored to health and strength. “It isn’t always easy to be brave, Lucy,” he said at last, “not for the bravest of us.”

Gradually Lucy dried her tears, and, tired out now almost beyond the power to think, she leaned back in her chair and fell half asleep. But even in her dreams her father’s face appeared before her. She could see plainly his clear gray eyes and bronzed cheeks. She saw him again as he stood on the Governor’s Island dock, the day he left to join his regiment,—tall and soldierly, in the uniform which always seemed a part of himself, and which he had worn for twenty-five years. The dream was almost a reassuring one, even when she woke, for it seemed somehow as though her father must still be determined and confident. But on top of this came the bitter certainty that when Mr. Leslie had said, “He wants most awfully to see one of you,” he had shrunk from adding “before he dies.”

At last she made up her mind to ask the question until now evaded.

“Where is Father wounded, Cousin Henry?” she whispered.

“He received a bullet through the lungs. His regiment pushed ahead five hundred yards, against heavy odds, and took the enemy’s trenches.” Mr. Leslie bent down toward his little cousin as he spoke, but a slow nod was her only answer.

At daybreak Calais was but a few miles distant. Lucy went into a cabin to wash her tear-stained face, and returning to Mr. Leslie’s side was persuaded to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk. The precautions observed during the crossing were cast aside, and with the French coast in plain sight beyond a narrow blue stretch of water, tramping feet filled the decks, and windlasses began hauling goods up from the crowded hold.

An hour later, after interviews in which Mr. Leslie showed his papers half a dozen times over to curious officials, he and Lucy walked down the gangway onto the 

 Prev. P 12/191 next