Part 16 (1/2)

He sighed, nodded to Ruth, and stepped back to let the car go on. The girl felt as though she were growing superst.i.tious herself. This surely was a new and strange world she had come to-and a new and strange experience.

”Do you really believe all that?” she finally asked Charlie Bragg, point-blank.

”I tell you I don't know what I believe,” he said. ”But you saw the werwolf as well as I. Now, didn't you?”

”I saw a light-colored dog of large size that ran across the track we were following,” said Ruth Fielding decisively, almost fiercely. ”I'll confess to nothing else.”

But she liked Charlie Bragg just the same, and thanked him warmly when he set her down at the door of the Clair Hospital just before midnight.

He was going on to the ambulance station, several miles nearer to the actual front.

There were no street lights in Clair and the windows of the hospital were all shrouded, as well as those of the dwellings left standing in the town. Airplanes of the enemy had taken to bombing hospitals in the work of ”frightfulness.”

Ruth was welcomed by a kindly Frenchwoman, who was matron, or _directrice_, and shown to a cell where she could sleep. Her duties began the next morning, and it was not long before the girl of the Red Mill was deeply engaged in this new work-so deeply engaged, indeed, that she almost forgot her suspicions about the woman in black, and Legrand and Jose, or whatever their real names were.

However, Charlie Bragg's story of the werwolf, of the suspected countess in her chateau behind Clair, and Gaston's prophecy regarding the meaning of the ghostly appearance, were not easily forgotten. Especially, when, two nights following Ruth's coming to the hospital, a German airman dropped several bombs near the inst.i.tution. Evidently he was trying to get the range of the Red Cross hospital.

CHAPTER XVI-THE DAYS ROLL BY

Ruth Fielding had already become inured to the sights and sounds of hospital life at Lyse, and to its work as well. Of course she was not under the physical strain that the Red Cross nurses endured; but her heart was racked by sympathy for the _blesses_ as greatly as the nurses'

own.

Starting without knowing anyone in the big hospital, she quickly learned her duties, and soon showed, too, her fitness for the special work a.s.signed her. Her responsibilities merely included the arranging of special supplies and keeping the key of her supply room; but the particular strain attending her work was connected with the spiritual needs of the wounded.

Their grat.i.tude, she soon found, was a thing to touch and warm the heart. Fretful they might be, and as unreasonable as children at times.

But in the last count they were all-even the hardest of them-grateful for what she could do for them.

She had read (who has not?) of the n.o.ble sacrifices of that great woman whose work for the helpless soldiers in hospital antedates the Red Cross and its devoted workers-Florence Nightingale. She knew how the sick and dying soldiers in the Crimea kissed her shadow on their pillows as she pa.s.sed their cots, and blessed her with their dying breaths.

The roughest soldier, wounded unto death, turns to the thought of mother, of wife, of sweetheart, of sister-indeed, turns to any good woman whose voice soothes him, whose hand cools the fever of his brow.

Ruth Fielding began to understand better than ever before this particular work that she was now called upon to perform, and that she was so well fitted to perform.

She was cheerful as well as sympathetic; she was sane beyond most young girls in her management of men-many men.

”Bless you, Mademoiselle!” declared the matron, ”of course they will make love to you. Let them. It will do them good-the poor _blesses_-and do you no harm. And you have a way with you!”

Ruth got over being worried by amatory bouts with the wounded poilus after a while. Her best escape was to offer to write letters to the afflicted one's wife or sweetheart. That was part of her work-to attend to as much of the correspondence of the helplessly wounded as possible.

And all the time she gave sympathy and care to these strangers she hoped, if Tom Cameron should chance to be wounded, some woman would be as kind to him!

She had not received a second letter from Tom; but after a fortnight Mr.

Cameron and Helen came unexpectedly to Clair. Helen spent two days with her while Mr. Cameron attended to some important business connected with his mission in France.

They had seen Tom lately, and reported that the boy had advanced splendidly in his work. Mr. Cameron declared proudly that his son was a born soldier.