She coaxed Sara Lee back at last. They went through the fields, for

fresh troops were being thrown into the Belgian trenches and the street

was full of men. Great dray horses were dragging forward batteries, the

heavy guns sliding and slipping In the absence of such information as

only Henri had been wont to bring it was best to provide for the worst.

The next day Jean did not come over for breakfast, and Rene handed Sara

Lee a note.

"I am going to England," Jean had written that dawn in the house of the

mill. "And from there to Holland. I can get past the barrier and shall

work down toward the Front. I must learn what has happened, mademoiselle.

As you know, if he was captured, there is no hope. But there is an

excellent chance that he is in hiding, unable to get back. Look for me

in two weeks."

There followed what instructions he had given as to her supplies, which

would come as before. Beautifully written in Jean's small fine hand, it

spelled for Sara Lee the last hope. She read Jean's desperation through

its forced cheerfulness. And she faced for the first time a long period

of loneliness in the crowded little house.

She tried very hard to fill the gap that Henri had left--tried to joke

with the men in her queer bits of French; was more smiling than ever,

for fear she might be less. But now and then in cautious whispers she

heard Henri's name, and her heart contracted with very terror.

A week. Two weeks. Twice the village was bombarded severely, but the

little house escaped by a miracle. Marie considered it the same miracle

that left holy pictures unhurt on the walls of destroyed houses, and

allowed the frailest of old ebony and rosewood crucifixes to remain

unharmed.

Great generals, often as tall as they were great, stopped at the little

house to implore Sara Lee to leave. But she only shook her head.

"Not unless you send me away," she always said; "and that would break

my heart."

"But to move, mademoiselle, only to the next village!" they would

remonstrate, and as a final argument: "You are too valuable to risk an

injury."

"I must remain here," she said. And some of them thought they

understood. When an unusually obdurate officer came along, Sara Lee

would insist on taking him to the cellar.

"You see!" she would say, holding her candle high. "It is a nice cellar,

warm and dry. It is"--proudly--"one of the best cellars in the village.

It is a really homelike cellar."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024