to have some supper with you now.”

It was soon after eight o’clock when Lucy bade her Cousin Henry good-night and left the hospital in Miss Pearse’s charge. Mr. Leslie had done his generous best in the past hour to cheer her, but without success, though she had tried hard to respond to his kind efforts. Her eyelids were like leaden weights, her brain seemed to have no thought nor feeling left in it, and she crossed the street, which was cluttered with stones and débris, stumbling as she walked, and vaguely wondering if all this were true. Miss Pearse was very kind and helped the tired girl to bed with gentle hands and in understanding silence. But once in her narrow cot, in the room adjoining that in which Miss Pearse and another nurse slept, Lucy’s dulled mind amazingly awoke and flashed before her pictures of everything she had seen and done in the past day and night. The pounding of the guns, which had become for a while an almost unnoticed part of her surroundings, seemed swelled to a horrible din that beat like hammers on her forehead, and not even with her head buried in the pillow could she find peace enough to sleep.

For months afterward Lucy remembered that first night at Château-Plessis. The misery of her loneliness overwhelmed her as she lay there wide-eyed in the thundering darkness, beset by fears she vainly struggled to put aside, afraid to look back at what seemed peaceful days behind, or ahead, to what might come to-morrow. At last she could bear it no longer, and sitting up in bed she determined to go and beg Miss Pearse’s company, tired though she knew the poor nurse must be after her long day’s work. But Miss Pearse had not quite forgotten the lonely little girl near her. Before Lucy had left her bed she heard some one at the door of her room, and a kind voice said, “Lucy! Can’t you sleep? I’m going to lie down on your bed beside you.”

There was not much room, but Lucy made all she could, with a heart almost too grateful for speech, and her faltered thanks was lost in the roar of the cannon. With Miss Pearse dropping off to exhausted sleep at her side, the thoughts that had tormented her weary mind faded off into blankness. At last she fell asleep.

When morning came Lucy opened her eyes and found she was alone. The sun shining onto her cot had awakened her, and, sitting up, she looked soberly around at the bare, unfurnished room. The plaster on the walls was cracked, and fallen stones had nearly blocked up the chimney. Only in one corner hung a picture, as though forgotten in hurried flight. It was of a dog, jumping up to beg, with ears 

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