Part 5

"Worse than that," responded he; "I must ask you to cut off your beautiful hair."

"My hair," gasped Hilda, darting her hand to her head, and giving the locks an unconscious pat.

"Your hair," replied the Doctor. "It breaks my heart to make you do it, but there's so much disease floating around in the air these days, that it is too great a risk for you to live with sick men day and night and carry all that to gather germs."

"I see," said Hilda in a subdued tone.

"One thing I will ask, that you give me a lock of it," he added quietly. She thought he was jesting with his request.

That afternoon she went to her cellar, and took the faithful shears which had severed so many bandages, and put them pitilessly at work on her crown of beauty. The hair fell to the ground in rich strands, darker by a little, and softer far, than the straw on which it rested. Then she gathered it up into one of the aged illustrated papers that had drifted out to the post from kind friends in Furnes. She wrapped it tightly inside the double page picture of laughing soldiers, celebrating Christmas in the trenches. And she carried it outside behind the black stump of a house which they called their home, and threw it on the cans that had once contained bully-beef. She was a little heart-sick at her loss, but she had no vanity. As she was stepping inside, the Doctor came down the road.

He stopped at sight of her.

"Oh, I am sorry," he said.

"I don't care," she answered, and braved it off by a little flaunt of her head, though there was a film over her eyes.

"And did you keep a lock for me?" he asked.

"You are joking," she replied.

"I was never more serious," he returned. She shook her head, and went down into the cellar. The Doctor walked around to the rear of the house.

A few minutes later, he entered the cellar.

"Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm going up the line to Nieuport. I'll be back in the morning." He turned to climb the steps, and then paused a moment.

"Beautiful hair brings good luck," he said.

"Then my luck's gone," returned Hilda.

"But mine hasn't," he answered.

* * * * *

"Let us go up the road this morning," suggested Mrs. Bracher, next day, "and see how the new men are getting on."

There was a line of trenches to the north, where reinforcements had just come in, all their old friends having been ordered back to Furnes for a rest.

"How loud the shells are, this morning," said Hilda. There were whole days when she did not notice them, so accustomed the senses grow to a repetition.

"Yes, they're giving us special treatment just now," replied Mrs. Bracher; "it's that six-inch gun over behind the farm-house, trying out these new men. They're gradually getting ready to come across. It will only be a few days now."

They walked up the road a hundred yards, and came on a knot of soldiers stooping low behind the roadside bank.

"What are those men looking at?" exclaimed Mrs. Bracher sharply.

"Some poor fellow. Probably work for us," returned Hilda.

Mrs. Bracher went nearer, peered at the outstretched form on the grass bank, then turned her head away suddenly.

"No work for us," she said. "Don't go near, child. It's too horrible. His face is gone. A shell must have taken it away. Oh, I'm sick of this war. I am sick of these sights."

One of the little group of men about the body had drawn near to her.