the German lines. The guy who laid out this burg was sure
thoughtless. He might have known there'd be a war some day. He
might even have strained his mind and guessed that we'd be stuck
here. Gee!"

He broke off with a grunt of disgust; nor did he so much as
listen to another of the group who sought to lure him into an
opinion as to whether the spy might be an inhabitant of the
village or a camp-follower.

Sucking at his pipe; the Sergeant glowered moodily down the
ruined street. The village drowsed under the hot midday. Here and
there a soldier lounged along aimlessly or tried out his
exercise-book French on some puzzled, native. Now and then an
officer passed in or out of the half-unroofed mairie which served
as regimental headquarters.

Beyond, in the handkerchief-sized village square, a platoon was
drilling. A thin French housewife was hanging sheets on a line
behind a shell-twisted hovel. A Red Cross nurse came out of the
hospital-church across the street from the estaminet and seated
herself on the stone steps with a basketful of sewing.

Mahan's half-shut eyes rested critically on the drilling
platoon--amusedly on the woman who was so carefully hanging the
ragged sheets,--and then approvingly upon the Red Cross nurse on
the church steps across the way.

Mahan, like most other soldiers, honored and revered the Red
Cross for its work of mercy in the army. And the sight of one of