“Oh! I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as that,” Isabelle protested.

“I don’t care.” Jan drew up her hundred and fifty odd pounds of good sturdy stuff, as she said: “With me it’s Burma or bust! Where the colonel goes, I go.”

“Burma or bust,” Than Shwe repeated. “That sounds like the colonel himself.”

“It does, at that,” Isabelle agreed.

“Suppose we draw up a petition, asking the colonel to take all of us along,” Gale suggested to Isabelle. “Do you think that would help?”

“It might,” Isabelle agreed. “I’m sure it would do no harm.”

At that they settled down to the task of drawing up a dignified and appropriate petition. When it was finished, Isabelle typed it, and they all—even Than Shwe—signed it.

“Who knows but this petition may help make history?” Isabelle murmured impressively. And indeed, who did know?

CHAPTER V A Light at the End of the Trail

CHAPTER V

A Light at the End of the Trail

The petition was delivered and acknowledged, and there the matter rested for some time. The rainy season dwindled away more and more. Each day increased the suspense hanging over the vast army camp. More ships arrived, with guns, bombs, airplanes, tanks and men. Men were there from all over,—America, Alabama, Illinois, Vermont, Washington, Texas. Not a state but was represented. There were some guessed hundreds of thousands of Americans and perhaps as many British. All of which added up to one fact—the colonel was going back to Burma. Only one question remained for the girls—“Are we to go?”

Then one day, having recalled the colonel’s words about temples, Gale invited Isabelle to go temple hunting with her.

At first they wandered through the narrow streets in silence, just the two of them, in an utterly foreign world. As they saw the pinched faces of children and peeped into the narrow, cramped quarters where they lived their life away, strange questions passed through their minds.

“Do you know,” said Isabelle, “I have always thought of this war as if it effected only our own people in America. Now I find myself thinking of these strange people of India. Yes, and of China, Japan and 

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