Part 6

"What do you want?" she asked crossly, as a woman will who is interrupted when she is close to tears.

"Will I identify him?" she repeated after him. "I tell you I never saw the man."

A little gasp of amazement came from the soldiers about the body.

"See what we have found," called one of the men--"in his pocket."

It was a lock of the very lightest and gayest of hair.

"Ah, my doctor," Hilda cried.

She spread the lock across the breast of the dead man. It was so vivid in the morning sun as to seem almost a living thing.

"And he said it would bring him luck," she murmured.

GOOD WILL

I looked into the face of my brother. There was no face there, only a red interior. This thing had been done to my brother, the Belgian, by my brother, the German. He had sent a splinter of shell through five miles of sunlight, hoping it would do some such thing as this.

THE RIBBONS THAT STUCK IN HIS COAT

The little group was gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional shell was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were entertaining a distinguished guest at the evening meal of tinned rabbit and dates. Their visitor was none other than F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, the famous English war-correspondent. He was dressed for the part. He wore high top-boots, whose red leather shone richly even in the dim yellow of the lantern that lit them to their feast. About his neck was swung a heavy black strap from which hung a pair of very elegant field-glasses, ready for service at a moment's call. He could sweep a battle-field with them, or expose a hidden battery, or rake a road. From the belt that made his jacket shapely about his person, there depended a map of the district, with heavy inked red lines for the position of friend or foe. He was a tall man, with an immense head, on which were stuck, like afterthoughts, very tiny features--a nose easily overlooked, a thin slit of a mouth, and small inset eyes. All the upper part of him was overhanging and alarming, till you chanced on those diminutive features. It was as if his growth had been terminated before it reached the expressive parts. He had an elaborate manner--a reticence, a drawl, and a chronic irony. Across half of his chest there streaked a rainbow of color; gay little ribbons of decoration, orange and crimson and purple and white.

Mrs. Bracher, sturdy, iron-jawed, and Scotch, her pretty young assistant, sat opposite him at table. Hilda did the honors by sitting next him, and passing him tins of provender, as required.

"What pretty ribbons you wear," said Hilda. "Where did you get them?"

"Oh, different wars," returned Barkleigh carelessly.

"That's modest, but it's vague," urged Hilda. "If I had such pretty ribbons, I should have the case letter and the exhibit number printed on each. Now this one, for instance. What happened to set this fluttering?"

"Oh, that one," he said, nearly twisting his eyes out of their sockets to see which one her fingers had lighted on. "That's one the Japs gave me."

"Thank you for not calling them the little brown people," returned Hilda; "that alone would merit decoration at their hands. And this gay thing, what principality gave you this?"

"That came from somewhere in the Balkans. I always did get those states muddled up."

"Incredible haziness," responded Hilda. "You probably know the exact hour when the King and his Chief of Staff called you out on the Town-hall steps. You must either be a very brave man or else write very nice articles about the ruling powers."

"The latter, of course," returned he, a little nettled.

"Vain as a peacock," whispered Scotch to the ever-watchful Mrs. Bracher.

"I don't understand you women," said Ainslie-Barkleigh, clearing his throat for action. But Hilda was too quick for him.

"I know you don't," she cut in, "and that is no fault in you. But what you really mean is that you don't like us, and that, I submit, is your own fault."

"But let me explain," urged he.

"Go ahead," said Hilda.

"Well, what I mean is this," he explained. "Here I find you three women out at the very edge of the battle-front. Here you are in a cellar, sleeping in bags on the straw, living on bully-beef and canned stuff. Now, you could just as well be twenty miles back, nursing in a hospital."

"Is there any shortage of nurses for the hospitals?" interposed Hilda. "When I went to the Red Cross at Pall Mall in London, they had over three thousand nurses on the waiting list."