out of chaos, could not but admire the manner in which his bearded fellow-passenger clung immovably[Pg 28] to his seat until the last woman was aboard, and then reached quickly out, slammed shut the door, and held it shut, despite the entreaties of the lost souls who drifted despairingly past along the platform, seemingly blind, deaf, and totally uninterested in what was passing around him.

[Pg 28]

Then Stewart looked at the women. Nine were crowded into the seats; eight were standing; all were red and perspiring; and most of them had plainly lost their tempers. Stewart was perspiring himself, and he got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead; then he ventured to speak.

“Well,” he said; “so this is war! I have always heard it was warm work!”

Most of the women merely glared at him and went on adjusting their clothing, and fastening up their hair, and straightening their hats; but one, a buxom woman of forty-eight or fifty, who was crowded next to him, and who had evidently suffered more than her share of the general misfortune, turned sharply.

“Are you an American?” she demanded.

“I am, madam.”

“And you stand by and see your countrywomen treated in this perfectly outrageous fashion?”

“My dear madam,” protested Stewart, “what [Pg 29]could one man—even an American—do against a thousand?”

[Pg 29]

“You could at least——”

“Nonsense, mother,” broke in another voice, and Stewart turned to see that it was a slim, pale girl of perhaps twenty-two who spoke. “The gentleman is quite right. Besides, I thought it rather good fun.”

“Good fun!” snapped her mother. “Good fun to be jerked about and trampled on and insulted! And where is our baggage? Will we ever see it again?”

“Oh, the baggage is safe enough,” Stewart assured her. “The troops will detrain somewhere this side the frontier, and we can all take our old seats.”

“But why should they travel by this train? Why should 

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