By the time Henri was well enough to resume his former activities it was

almost the first of May. The winter quiet was over with a vengeance, and

the Allies were hammering hard with their first tolerably full supply of

high-explosive shells.

Cheering reports came daily to the little house--, of rapidly augmenting

armies, of big guns on caterpillar trucks that were moving slowly up to

the Allied Front. Great Britain had at last learned her lesson, that

only shells of immense destructiveness were of any avail against the

German batteries. She was moving heaven and earth to get them, but the

supply was still inadequate. With the new shells experiments were being

made in barrage fire--costly experiments now and then; but the Allies

were apt in learning the ugly game of modern war.

Only on the Belgian Front was there small change. The shattered army

was being freshly outfitted. England was sending money and ammunition,

and on the sand dunes small bodies of fresh troops drilled and smiled

grimly and drilled again. But there were not, as in England and in

France, great bodies of young men to draw from. Too many had been

caught beyond the German wall of steel.

Yet a wave of renewed courage had come with the sun and the green

fields. And conditions had improved for the Belgians in other ways.

They were being paid, for one thing, with something like regularity.

Food was better and more plentiful. One day Henri appeared at the top

of the street and drove down triumphantly a small unclipped horse,

which trundled behind it a vertical boiler on wheels with fire box and

stovepipe.

"A portable kitchen!" he explained. "See, here for soup and here for

coffee. And more are coming."

"Very soon, Henri, they will not need me," Sara Lee said wistfully.

But he protested almost violently. He even put the question to the

horse, and blowing in his ear made him shake his head in the negative.

She was needed, indeed. To the great base hospital at La Panne went

more and more wounded men. But to the little house of mercy came the

small odds and ends in increasing numbers. Medical men were scarce, and

badly overworked. There was talk, for a time, of sending a surgeon to

the little house, but it came to nothing. La Panne was not far away,

and all the surgeons they could get there were not too many.

So the little house went on much as before. Henri had moved to the mill.

He was at work again, and one day, in the King's villa and quietly,

because of many reasons, Henri, a very white and erect Henri, received a

second medal, the highest for courage that could be given.




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