way among the heaps of broken stone, dropped them before the old town hall, over which the Red Cross flag now floated. Mr. Leslie took Lucy’s arm and led her up the wide stone steps. A nurse came forward, and some men in uniform, but Lucy hardly saw them. They entered a great, many-windowed hall which had once been a court of justice, but now was a crowded ward, filled to overflowing with cots on which lay wounded men. On the floor lay more men, on blankets or mattresses, and between them stepped nurses and orderlies, intent and earnest, without time to so much as lift their tired eyes at sight of the newcomers. A surgeon had exchanged a few quick words with Mr. Leslie, and now he led the way to a door some distance down the ward. This door he opened, and after glancing inside the room, made Lucy a silent sign to enter.

Lucy was trembling from head to foot as she crossed the threshold. The hand that clutched at Mr. Leslie’s left red marks across his fingers. But she fought desperately to hide her fear as she raised her eyes to face the nurse who came forward from beside the cot at one end of the little room. She might have spared herself that effort at self-control made for her father’s sake. Colonel Gordon lay motionless upon the pillows, his sun-tanned cheeks not quite hiding the deadly pallor of his face. His breathing was quick and labored and his eyes were closed. But when Lucy knelt beside him and, forgetting all else around her, caught his responseless hand in hers, for a second his lids quivered and parted and the wide gray eyes looked into hers. Then the lids fluttered down again, and behind her she heard the surgeon, speaking loud against the roar of the guns, say, “He will hardly know her now. He’s but half conscious.”

Lucy bent her head over her father’s hand, and the tears, so long restrained, poured down her cheeks in a warm, salty shower. Sobs choked her, but she forced them back, or buried them in the blanket’s woolly folds. Then the hand she held stirred slowly in her clasp, and at the same time she felt a soft touch upon her tumbled hair. Incredulous, she raised her head, winking away the tears, and saw her father’s eyes fixed full upon her. Puzzled and uncertain, dimmed with pain, they met her eager, longing gaze, but recognition was somewhere in their depths.

“Lucy—you?” he murmured, and while Lucy, at the faint smile that touched his weary face, struggled for power to answer him, he added clearly, “Poor little girl! I wanted so to see you. It was hard for you—this journey.” His smile had faded to a frown of pain, but his hold on Lucy’s hand did not relax, and she, suddenly by some help 

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