"Well, fellows, that was the end. Next morning they were peppering away at each other, struggling like a lot of dogs to get a throat hold. Seems sort of queer, don't you think so?

"I don't believe this could happen now, because they have been fighting so long that they hate each other now. I think at first that they were like dogs that someone sicks into a fight. They do it because they want to be obliging, or because they think they have to mind. They would just as soon stop and wag their tails and go to chasing cats or digging for rabbits together. But they have fought now until the bitterness of it has entered deep. I can't guess what the end will be. I don't believe anybody can.

"You had better stir up everybody over there about it, and 'rustle the requisite' as Main always said. Everything for field hospital work is badly needed. Seems to me you could send a few hundred dollars of stuff over, well as not. You, Corky, you had better sell that car of yours. You know the Commandant doesn't half approve of it, and Baxter can give up that motor-boat. You will drown yourself, Baxter, sure as sure! And think how much better you would feel to stay alive, and help a lot of shot-to-bits poor fellows in the bargain.

"Things look so different when you are right on the ground. What they tell me about some of the shot wounds that come to the hospitals makes me wonder if I have enough backbone to stand up under it, when the fighting really commences. I believe I am getting scared!

"The English fellow told me that after the first shot or two you didn't seem to mind anything; you just went right ahead, and tended to work as though, as he said, it was a May morning in an English lane. I suppose he thought that was about as near Paradise as he could imagine, but the finest place I can think of is—Oh well, fellows, you know. I wish I was close enough to the gang to have you pound me on the back, and to kick that big brute of a Mackilvane for trying to stuff me under the bed. I'd like to hear some of Gregg's rag-time, and see Mealy Jones try to ride the bay horse.

"But this is the end of my paper, and I've got to go back to the hospital. To-morrow I am to be put on regular duty. That's why I am writing you this long letter. It may be a good while before I write another; so good-bye, old pals. I'll come back some day if I live.

Yours, ZAIDOS."



CHAPTER VII

A BIT OF ROMANCE

Zaidos sent off his letter and continued his explorations.

He managed to slip away from Velo finally and was greatly relieved. Somehow everything went along better without Velo tagging at his heels. Zaidos felt ashamed when he tried to analyze his feelings. He was at a loss to understand himself. Even Nurse Helen, who frankly confessed to Zaidos that she disliked Velo, was obliged to say that there was nothing openly objectionable about him. His manners were easy and graceful, and he was quicker to jump to her assistance than any man on the detail.

He treated Zaidos with a protective fondness that was almost funny. He watched him, saw that he went to bed and arose on schedule time, helped dress his scratch, and looked after him generally like a faithful and devoted nurse.

Yet Nurse Helen pondered. She never once let him handle one of the dressings which were rapidly healing the ugly little tear in Zaidos' arm. Zaidos, escaping from Velo's watchful eye, felt like a glad little, bad little boy who has run away from school and who refuses to think of supper time, when he must go home and find that father has the note teacher has sent home by some other little boy. He went here and there, his sunny smile and ready kindliness making friends everywhere.

Wherever he sat down to rest some soldier told him something of interest. Gunners explained the watch-like perfection of their guns. Snipers told thrilling tales of long shots. The cooks showed him how cleverly the big field stoves came apart, and how they could be assembled at a moment's notice.

At supper time his new friend, Lieutenant Cunningham, called him. He had kept a place for Zaidos beside him. Velo had been omitted from the group, so he smilingly sat down in another bend of the trench with his pannikin of stew and cup of coffee, seemingly quite content. But black hate raged in his black heart!

Velo was a strange sort. He was a coward; he dreaded danger and endured hardships badly. Yet the thought that harm might come to him never entered his head. He was deeply superstitious, and while he could and did change the bottles and place the poison within his cousin's reach, while he placed the rusty pin in the crutch where it would inflict a wound on Zaidos' body, while he could plan endlessly to rid himself of his cousin, he would not himself directly aim the blow or fire the deadly shot. He rejoiced in the battle that was threatening. Zaidos would die, and he wanted the evidence of his own eyes. Also he wanted the statements of witnesses. Sometimes when he heard Zaidos' ready laugh, and saw his bright, straightforward look, a flicker of pity shadowed his dastardly resolve. Then he remembered the soft living, the ease and luxury of the house of Zaidos, and remembering that he, as Velo Kupenol, must be all his life nothing but a dependent on his cousin's bounty, he steeled his wicked heart to its self-appointed task.

But he must change his tactics. Zaidos as usual was surrounding himself with friends. Velo felt that he must be doubly careful. There must be no more strange, unaccountable accidents to Zaidos. When the blow fell it must crush him utterly; until then, he must be left to move securely.

Velo thought of all this as he sat talking to the soldier beside him and eating the plain fare of the men in the field.

The talk was all of the coming attack. Spies had reported a movement of preparation in the enemy's ranks, and there was a stir of warning in the very air. To Velo's amazement, no one seemed worried or anxious. The conversation moved smoothly on, as though the battle was a test of skill on a chess-board. Not a man there seemed to regard the coming event in a personal light. Even the uncertainty did not distress anyone. The attack would surely come, but whether it would come the following night or in a week's time did not seem to matter in the least. Velo had expected to see in an event like this a lot of men brooding gloomily over the possible outcome, a dismal time with last farewells, and touching letters written home. He watched the young officer beside him. He had finished his meal and had taken out a pad of paper and an indelible pencil. He wrote rapidly, but with a calm and smiling face. Velo could not imagine any tragic farewells in that letter.

Velo, still staring at the writer, listened to the conversation along the wall of the trench. It had at last turned from war to out-door sports. Velo, who never exercised if he could avoid it, listened idly. A small, pale boy in a lieutenant's uniform was violently upholding certain rules while the officer next to Zaidos disputed him smilingly. They argued pleasantly, but with the most intense earnestness.

"Who is that straw-colored chap?" Velo asked the writer beside him.

"Across?" questioned the scribbler. "We call him 'Sister Anne.' You know she was the lady in Bluebeard's yarn that kept looking out the window. He is always sticking his head out of the trenches, to see what he can see. He's going to get his some day."

"Don't you know his real name?" asked Velo. "He acts as though he thought he was somebody of importance."

"Why, when you come down to it, I suppose perhaps he is when he is at home," said the man. "He's a jolly good sort, though. He's the Earl of Craycourt."

"And who is the chap beside my cousin?" asked Velo, steadying his voice with difficulty.

"The Prince of Teck's second son," answered the writer. Velo's curiosity rather disgusted him. "Anybody else you would like to know about?"

"Well, who are you?" said Velo, trying to get back.

"Your very humble servant, John Smith," he said. He slid the pencil down into his puttee and stood up, bowing. He did not ask Velo for his name but, closing the pad, strolled off and slid an arm around the neck of the second son of the Prince of Teck.

Velo for once felt small, but he jotted young John Smith down on his black list for further reference! As for the others, he could not get over the fact of their noble birth. He stood staring at the group. Zaidos was as usual in the center of things, having the best sort of a time. That was Zaidos' luck, thought Velo. He stared at the bent head of "John Smith," bending over the "second son of the Prince of Teck." For a plain "John Smith" he seemed exceedingly chummy with the young nobleman. Velo was a natural-born toady. True worth, real nobility of mind and soul meant nothing to him. But he did not lack assurance. After a moment he braced up and joined the group where Zaidos and Lord Craycourt, who answered willingly to the nickname "Sister Anne" were swapping school yarns and the others were in gales of laughter.

And at that moment, without warning, in the arm of the trench where Velo had just been sitting, a great shell dropped and exploded with the noise of pandemonium. A wave of dirt and splinters were pushed towards them. As the air cleared, there was the sound of a feeble moan or two, then silence. "John Smith," rather white, stood looking at the fresh mound of earth.

"There were six fellows in there when I came away," he said. "Get to work, everybody!"

With sabers and pieces of wood and hands, they cleared away the wreckage. One by one they came to the pitiful fragments that had been men. One by one, they laid them reverently aside. It was only just as they had reached the angle leading to the cook house that they found a crumpled body that moved slightly as they touched it.

"We can't hurt him much; he's too far gone," said "John Smith." "Lift him up, and get him over to the First Aid!"

They kicked a rough way into the cook house, hurried through it and the connecting tunnel to the First Aid. There they laid the shattered body on the table, and with the exception of Zaidos and Velo, all went back to repair the trench.

Never again during his experience with the Red Cross did Zaidos find time to watch the marvelous skill of a field surgeon. The soldier, a large and muscular man, was almost in ribbons. His flesh was actually tattered, and the dirt had been driven into the wounds. A leg had been blown off, and both arms were broken. Yet he lived. There was quick and silent work for awhile. When the doctor finally stood up and looked critically at his finished task lying there bandaged like a mummy and breathing with the heavy slowness of insensibility, he nodded in satisfaction.

"I only wish all the other poor fellows who come in here had your luck, my boy," he said, nodding at the insensible patient. "If I could get you one at a time, it would be an easy matter; but when you come at us by the dozen, it is a different affair entirely. He's ready," he added to Zaidos. "Get a couple of bearers, and take him to the rear. Don't lift him yourself. There are plenty to do it to-night, and your leg is not too strong yet."

Zaidos called a couple of privates from the trench, and went with them back to the main hospital. The man on the stretcher lay like dead. Nurse Helen received him.

"I'm coming your way to-morrow, John," she said. "I have been detailed to the First Aid shelter."

"I'm sorry," said Zaidos. "It is too near the firing line in there for a woman."

"For a woman perhaps," said Helen with a little smile, "but not for a nurse. That is a different thing, John."

"I can't see it," said Zaidos.

As he spoke, another dull roar marked the falling of a second shell.

"I don't see why they start up to-night," said Zaidos. "I wonder if that did any damage."

"They want to worry us enough so that the men will lose sleep," said a soldier standing near. "But no one will bother about a few shells. The men will get into the bomb proof shelters until daylight. It is a waste of ammunition as it is."

An orderly entered with a written call for a nurse for the First Aid Station. Nurse Helen was called to the Head Nurse and in a moment came hurrying back to Zaidos.

"They have sent for me now," she said. "I suppose some other cases have come in."

"I'll go back with you," offered Zaidos, and together they stumbled along through the rapidly gathering dusk.

Three more men had been hurt, and when they had finally been sent back to the hospital, it was almost midnight.

Zaidos found Helen sitting at the opening of the shelter, looking up at the stars. She made room for him on the plank.

"I'm thinking hard about home, John," she said. "One's viewpoint changes so. I wish I knew that I have done right to come here and leave my parents and little sister. I'm just so lonely and troubled to-night that I have half a mind to tell you my story."

"I wish you would," said Zaidos, "if you feel like telling me. I told you all about myself, and it would make me feel sort as if I was really am old friend of yours if you told me things, too."

"Of course," said Helen. "I know how you feel. Well, John, you know, don't you, that we are certainly in for an attack as soon as it is daylight? Perhaps before, because the enemy has searchlights that make it easy for them to bother us in the dark. I know they are expecting a big battle because this is a much coveted position. A great number of fresh troops are on the way here. I learned that to-night, and that looks serious, because we have our full quota of men here now. They are going to change shifts all night. So there will doubtless be heavy work for the Red Cross people, and much of that may be field work. And, John, it may be that never again will you and I sit talking together."

"Nonsense!" said Zaidos. "Don't talk like that! You are too sweet and pretty to die, and I can't die because I have got such a lot to do."

Helen shook her head. "I don't say that we will," she said. "But boys as busy as you, and women nicer than I could ever dream of being, have gone out into the dark—crowds of them, in this war."

Zaidos saw that she was deep in one of the black moods that sometimes comes over the sunniest natures.

"Well, never mind," he said. "You are going to tell me who you are, and all about things, and we are going to have the nicest sort of a visit, if we sit up all night."

"I shall have to sit up anyway," said Helen. "I'm on night duty."

"Well, then so am I," said Zaidos, "so begin!"

"Our home is in Devonshire," said Helen. "My father is rector of a large parish there. Everything for miles and miles around belongs to the Earl of Hazelden. He has three children, a girl and two boys, and we grew up together. We liked the same sports, and enjoyed the same pleasures. The daughter, Marion, who is only a year younger than I am, went to school with me near London, and afterwards to France where we were perfected in languages. My sister is four years younger than I, so in those days she did not really count. I forgot to say that my mother was well born, and had a large fortune in her own name, so we were able to live better and have more luxuries than a clergyman can usually provide. Of course we lived simply, but we could afford the best and most exclusive schools, and I had horses to ride that were exactly as good as the Hazelden children's.

"At last Marion and I returned from school, our education finished. Ellston Hazelden, the eldest son, was in the army, of course, and Frank, the second, was in London studying law. At Christmas Ellston came home on leave, and Frank came down from London. Oh, John, I wish you knew Ellston! He is the finest—there is no one like him! Of course any girl would have fallen in love with him. I did. Oh, I did indeed! I shall never see him again, John, and I am not ashamed to tell you how I loved him and how I will always love him."

"Well, then—" interrupted Zaidos.

She silenced him. "Let me tell you the rest. I loved him, and when he told me that he loved me and wanted me to marry him, it seemed the sweetest, most natural thing in the world. I suppose here you think will come in the dark plot of the simple rector's daughter, and the haughty Earl who thinks she is not good enough for his son and heir. It was not a bit like that. Lord and Lady Hazelden were adorable. They came and welcomed me with open arms, and Lord Hazelden said he had been planning it ever since we were little tots!

"John, it just seemed as though they could not do enough for us. Lady Hazelden was in deep mourning for her mother, so we decided not to announce our engagement for six months. Then in three months more we would marry. Every day the Hazeldens drove over with some beautiful plan for our happiness. They had one entire wing of the castle done over for us. Ellston came down often as he could."

Helen lapsed into silence, and sat staring into the night.

"Well, what then?" asked Zaidos, staring at the lovely, sorrowful face beside him. "Did he die?"

"No," said Helen haltingly. "We quarreled."

"Quarreled?" echoed Zaidos. "Quarreled after all that? I don't see how you could!"

"I don't see now, either," said Helen. "It was my fault. I should have made him make up with me."

"What was the fuss about?" asked Zaidos. He was intensely interested. He had never been so close to a real love affair before. Of course he had met a girl at one of the hops; the one he gave the collar emblem to. Zaidos couldn't think of her name, but he remembered that he had been pretty hard hit. He knew she was a pretty girl; funny he couldn't think of her name! It occurred to Zaidos that a fellow ought to know a girl's name anyhow if he was crazy over her. And he had been quite crazy over her for a whole evening. Had it bad! Anyhow, he was sure she was a blonde. That was proof that he remembered and suffered! But Helen was speaking.

"I hate to tell you," she said. "It seems so trivial now."

"Well, let's hear about it," said Zaidos. "Perhaps we can get hold of the chap and fix things up."

"Not now," said Helen sadly. "It is too late. There always comes a time when it is too late, John. Don't forget that. I have found it out."

She paused again, and Zaidos was afraid she was never going on, but finally she took up her story.

"There is actually nothing to it. It commenced with the color of a dress I wore. Tony said it was the most unbecoming thing I had ever had on. I had just been visiting a friend in London, a very advanced girl, and she had been telling me what a mistake it was when one gave up to the prejudices of a man. She said do it once and you would do it always. So when Tony said quite calmly, 'Do please throw the thing away, or burn it up,' I thought I ought to take a firm stand. I said, 'I shall do neither. This is a perfectly new dress, and I mean to wear it all summer.' Tony laughed. He said, 'Well, I'm blessed if I take any leave until winter then!' Of course he was joking, and a girl with the least common sense would have known it; but I retorted, 'That is an excellent plan!' He said, 'Why, Helen, you don't mean that, do you?' and I said I certainly did. We parted rather stiffly. It was his last evening at home, and I had put on the frock in honor of it. He wrote as soon as he reached London, and referred to the dress again. He said such trivial things should never be permitted to come between two people who loved each other. I returned that it was not trivial, but a matter of principle, which I should support. John, it actually parted us. Actually parted us! Just think of it!"

"Well, I never heard such bosh!" Zaidos said. "Why didn't you write and tell him it was perfect nonsense, and that you were sorry?"

"That is the worst of it," said Helen. "I did just that, and told him how I loved him, and that it didn't matter what I wore, so long as he liked it. Oh, I said everything, John, that a silly and repentant and loving girl could say, and sent the letter to his quarters in London. I even put my return address on the envelope."

"What did he say?" said Zaidos.

"Not a word!" said Helen sadly. "Not one word! I waited for two weeks, and then he was ordered to the front. Still he did not write. I sent him back his ring; it was all I could do, and left home for awhile. He came down for a day, but did not come to our house. Not a very exciting affair is it, John?"

"Perfect bosh!" declared Zaidos. "I'll bet anything, anything that he never received your letter at all, or else he answered and you did not get his letter. Why didn't you telephone him? Letters are no good."

"I asked him to telephone me," said Helen. "I watched that telephone for three days all the time."

"Didn't you leave it at all?" said Zaidos.

"Only once for an hour," said Helen, "and then I had my own maid sit right beside it.

"That is all there is to my poor little story, John boy. Tony is somewhere in France, if he still lives, and I came out here when I could stand it no longer at home. You see I am not afraid of death because I don't in the least care to live without Tony."

"Well, it's too bad," said Zaidos. "Wish I had been there. I just know he never got your letter. I just know it!"

"The story is ended now, at any rate," said Helen. "If Tony lives he will go back home and marry some woman who has common sense to appreciate him, and as for me, to the end of my days, I shall be just Nurse Helen." She sighed softly, and for a moment looked into the night.

"Do you want to see him?" she asked. She drew from her uniform a slender chain with a big gold locket swinging on it. A crest was on it set with diamonds that flashed in the dim light. Zaidos looked at the open, handsome face.

"Look like him?" he asked.

"Exactly like him!" she replied.

"Well, when I meet him," promised Zaidos, "I'll tell him a few things!"

Helen smiled. "You will never meet," she said. "But if ever anything happens to me, John, take this and send it to him. You'll remember the name, won't you?"

"Oh, yes!" said Zaidos, "I'll remember! But just you take notice, he never got that letter!"

"What a stubborn boy you are!" exclaimed Helen.

"Not stubborn at all," declared Zaidos, looking at the lovely face. "I'm merely a man myself, if I am young."



CHAPTER VIII

HAPPINESS FOR HELEN

Again Helen laughed.

"All right," said Zaidos. "Have it all your own way, but I know I am right about this affair. A fellow with a face like that, engaged to a girl like you, would have acknowledged that letter just in common politeness if nothing else. Just to say, 'Thank you, but I don't care to play with you any more!' Oh, yes, he would have answered it!"

"Whether he would or not," said Helen, "the breach is too wide to cross now. It is all over. I deserved to lose him and I feel no bitterness about it. My fate is what I deserve."

Zaidos hated to hear her self-reproaches. "I don't know about that," he defended awkwardly. "Probably he ought to have come half way. It looks so to me."

"It is growing light in the east," said Helen. "We have talked all night about my poor little affairs. Let us think of something else now, let us—"

She was interrupted by a shattering boom of artillery. It seemed to crack the very air. They sprang upright and stood for a moment listening.

"The beginning!" said Helen solemnly.

"Well, good-bye," said Zaidos. "I must see where they want me to go. Where's that doctor?"

The doctor and his assistants as well were there. They hurried into the dug-out, calm, collected, business-like.

"Set out the antiseptics, nurse," said the doctor. "You were on night duty, but I can't let you go until someone comes to relieve you. This is very apt to be a big day. You, Zaidos, get out in the first line trench, and don't lose your head. That cousin of yours is hunting for you. I sent him forward too. Nurse, the new troops are here; every trench and shelter is full of men. A big day, children, a big day!"

He rubbed his muscular, sensitive hands together. Another roar shook the ground and balls of dirt rolled down the walls of the First Aid Station. They heard the muffled beat-beat of feet running through the trenches toward the front.

Zaidos, shivering, his teeth chattering with excitement, buckled on his aid kit and bolted out with a last wave of the hand. He hurried over through the short trench into the cook house, and then made his way along the trench toward the front. A return fire was beginning now, and high in the sky was seen the first Zeppelin. Like a great bird of prey it circled high in air above the lines. Then from somewhere in the rear an English airship skimmed to meet it. The bull-nosed Zeppelin soared and the lighter machine followed, light as a swallow. Zaidos stared, fascinated. He could see spurts of smoke from one and then the other. Another delicate craft passed overhead and joined the first English ship in pursuit. Zaidos stumbled on, still trying to watch the chase. He was suddenly thrown violently to the ground, and covered with earth. Screams of agony came from the trench ahead. He scrambled to his feet and ran forward. A dozen men, tumbled together in horrible confusion, lay tossing and shrieking. Zaidos turned faint for a moment. They were the awful flat, senseless cries of hurt animals. "A-a-a-a-a-a-a!" they shrilled and some of them tore at their wounds. Zaidos ran for the nearest man and knelt beside him. He tried to turn what was left of his body, and could not. He glanced around for help. Sneaking past toward the rear he saw a familiar figure. It was Velo Kupenol. Zaidos called him sharply, and the stern note of authority made Velo turn.

"Come here quickly!" commanded Zaidos.

"I can't!" panted Velo. "Zaidos, it makes me sick! I'm going to the rear for a little while."

Zaidos looked up at the face, white with cowardice.

"Come here!" said Zaidos. Still kneeling he pointed a small but business looking revolver at his cousin's heart. "Come here!" he ordered.

Velo obeyed, the look on his face changing from white terror to black hate.

Zaidos saw the look, and read it with unconcern.

"Come here, Velo!" He held Velo's shifty eyes. "You get to work here. If you don't, I shall shoot you, just as I would shoot a dog. There is no time to talk. Get to work! You hear what I tell you. Turn this man!"

Velo shudderingly put himself to the horrid task of lifting the bleeding and torn body. Zaidos talked as he worked in a deep, earnest tone that carried to Velo's ears even in the noise of battle.

"I'm going to be after you every minute, Velo Kupenol! You won't disgrace me if I can help it. Go get your stretcher. If you drop it I will kill you!"

He spoke so fiercely, and with such meaning, that Velo felt that for once his easy-going cousin had the upper hand.

As the doctor had said, they were suffering for lack of help, so Zaidos could not afford to let the coward run away. He had to have assistance if he was to save some of the lives which he felt were in a measure entrusted to him. So Velo had to be used. He stopped the gush of blood from a dozen wounds and, lifting on one end of the stretcher, ordered Velo, with a nod of his head, to lead on toward the First Aid Station.

Almost immediately they had the wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where the doctors and Nurse Helen worked with incredible swiftness and skill.

He did not speak to Helen, nor did she notice him. Velo, still pale, kept doggedly at his task, only an occasional gleam of hatred lighting his eyes when he had to look at his fearless cousin. He was more than ever like a treacherous dog, watching, always watching for its chance for a throat-hold.

And somehow, without a spoken word, the thing became clear to Zaidos. All at once he knew how deeply and utterly his cousin hated him. He knew as well as if Velo had shouted it aloud that he meant to be the instrument of his death in some way or other, sooner or later. And Zaidos, filled with the frenzy of the battle, did not care. He was not afraid of Velo. He put him aside as though he was something that might be attended to later.

A sort of mental illumination came to Zaidos. He cared for wounded men with a quick skill that he had never known that he possessed. He grew so weary that he staggered under his part of the stretcher's load. His leg pained him so that it was like a whip, keeping him awake and at work when all his body cried to drop down and sleep.

Once when he waited in the opening of the First Aid shelter, he was conscious that someone asked, "Have they broken our lines?"

"Not quite, but they are through the barbed wire. Our troops are massing along the first trench."

"If we can hold out until dark we are all right," said the first speaker, a captain with one leg gone at the knee, awaiting his turn with the doctor without the quiver of a muscle.

"The chaps over there beyond are pretty well tired out. I can tell by the way they are fighting. They are trying to save men."

Zaidos hurried out and lost the rest. It seemed to him that the whole world was in conflict just ahead there. The bomb-proof shelter was crammed with reserves. On and on and on went the fighting; for years and years and years it seemed to Zaidos. He did not know that the day waned and night was near. All he knew was that at last, while he and Velo waited in the First Aid for the stretcher to be emptied, silence fell, a silence punctuated with scattering explosions. The darkness had ended the fighting, and the enemy had only reached the first line of trenches.

"It is over!" said the doctor, glancing up.

Velo sank down on a plank and covered his face with his hands. Zaidos, standing, closed his eyes.

"Let those boys rest for five minutes," ordered the doctor.

Nurse Helen gently pushed Zaidos down on a bench. He toppled over and she put a folded cloak under his head. Then for thirty happy minutes he lost consciousness of everything. When an aide shook Zaidos awake, he came to himself with as much physical pain as though his body had actually felt the shock of wounds. He groaned involuntarily. Velo was sobbing dryly from fatigue and pain.

"Come, come, boys!" said the doctor. "Finish your good work! Here, take this." He mixed something in a glass, and gave it to Zaidos, and then repeated the dose for Velo. It braced them at once, and after they had visited the cook house and had taken some hot soup, they prepared to go out on the field again and look for wounded.

The night seemed very dark as they stumbled along. The dead lay piled everywhere in hideous confusion. There seemed to be no wounded. Man after man they scanned with their flashlights. The unsteady lights often gave the dead the effect of motion. As they sent the ray here and there they thought they saw eyes open or close, arms move, legs stretch out, or mangled and tortured bodies twist in agony. But under their exploring hands the dead lay cold.

They reached the first line trench and passed beyond it. Here lay ranks of the enemy, mowed down under the pitiless English fire.

"There is someone living over here," said Velo. "I heard a groan."

They turned and found a group of men; three dead, and across their bodies two who surely moved.

Zaidos propped his light on the breast of one of the dead soldiers and lifted the head of a young officer whose shattered leg held him helpless. He was quite conscious, and spoke to Zaidos in a weak whisper.

"I'm gone!" he said. "See what you can do for the man lying on my leg. I would have bled to death long ago if it hadn't been for his weight."

Zaidos looked in his kit anxiously. It was almost empty and the bandage was all gone.

"Velo, get back to the station and bring me a fresh kit," he ordered. "I'm going to hold this artery until you get back, and see if I can't keep a little blood in here." He sat down and pressed a finger on the fast emptying vein. With his free hand he held a flask to the lips of the almost dying man. Velo disappeared in the dark.

"Really, my dear chap," said the wounded officer, "it's a waste of time for you to do that. I wish you would jolly well leave me for some other chap. I'm done; and I don't care in the least, so you need not trouble your conscience about me."

Hurt to death as he was, the officer smiled; and Zaidos was all at once filled with the conviction that he was someone whom he had met. But where?

"That's nonsense!" said Zaidos. "We will fix you up if you will make up your mind to hang on to yourself."

"I've been hanging on for a good while," said the officer pleasantly. "I've been here for a year or two, I think. I only came down from London for the night, you see. Not very long, eh, old chap?" He nodded his head.

"You what?" said Zaidos stupidly.

"London, you know," said the officer. "I came down right away. I couldn't be sure it was true. Seemed sort of unofficial, don't you know?" He smiled again. Zaidos understood. He was delirious. He went on muttering disjointed sentences which Zaidos paid no attention to; but every time the man smiled his gay, light-hearted, unconscious smile, Zaidos felt the strange sense of acquaintance. He could see that the man was almost gone. He had lost almost all the blood in his body, and Zaidos did not dare to move him, nor even shift the weight of the unconscious but living man who laid across the shattered leg. Zaidos felt sure that he would die before Velo returned. And he was still more convinced that the man was at his end when after a few moments of stupor, he opened his eyes quite sanely and looked at Zaidos.

"That was a pretty bad blow for me, wasn't it, old chap?" he said quietly. "I think I won't make out to stop much longer. I've been here since eleven this morning. Pretty long for a man hurt like this. I am glad you ran across me. There's a lot of papers in my blouse. Would you mind sending them to the address on the outside envelope? And I wish you would write to my father. Tell him it's all right. Tell him not to let Frank enlist if he can help it. He's too young. And if you can mark the place they put me, it would be a mighty kind thing. Mother would be so glad if she could have me safe in the church at home, some day. Will you do this?"

"Of course I will," said Zaidos. "But I think you have got a chance."

"I don't want it," said the wounded man. "I could not fight again, and there are reasons—I really don't care a hang about living. Just send those letters for me. And one thing more," he tried to lift his hand to his throat, but was too weak. "Will you kindly take off the chain under my blouse," he said, "before anyone else gets here?"

Zaidos felt for the chain with his free hand, still pressing the artery with the other. As he found the chain, a large locket was released from the man's blouse and, swinging against his buttons, sprung open. Unconsciously Zaidos looked at it.

"Send that with the rest," said the officer. He closed his eyes.

"Here, you!" cried Zaidos. "Quit that! Don't you dare go and die! Do you hear me? Don't you do it! Do you hear? I want to talk! I don't need to send this anywhere. If you just hang on, you will see her! Helen is here! Don't die now! You want to see her, don't you? I know who you are! You are Tony Hazelden!"

"Helen here?" gasped the man.

"Yes," said Zaidos. "She is a nurse over there, a few yards away."

"Helen here?" said the man again.

"Yes, I tell you!" cried Zaidos. "Hang on to yourself! You want to tell her why you did not answer that letter she wrote you; don't you?"

"I never received a letter," said Hazelden, for it was he.

"That's what I told her," said Zaidos. "Now you just hang on to yourself. Don't you let go! Do whatever you like afterwards, but don't make me go back there and tell her you have gone and died before I could get you in hospital. I'd like to know where that Velo is with my kit! Here, take another drink of this!"

He pressed the flask once more to Hazelden's white lips. The man seemed sinking into a stupor. Zaidos watched him with secret terror. After the miracle of finding Hazelden here, when he was supposed by Helen to be far off in France, and after the brief joy of thinking that he might be the one to reunite the parted lovers, it was too hard to face the loss of his man. Zaidos kept calling him by name. Finally—it seemed a long, long time—Hazelden opened his eyes again.

"I can't see just how it is," he said. "Are you sure Helen is here?"

"Yes, she is here, I promise you," said Zaidos. "And you want to brace up for her sake. For her sake, do you understand? Her heart is about broken. Don't you go and die now after all the trouble you have made."

Hazelden gave Zaidos a straight look.

"What are you thinking of?" he said in his weak whisper. "You don't suppose I could die now, do you?"

"Here's my kit," said Zaidos, as Velo came hurrying up.

He fastened the artery rudely but well, and lifting off the unconscious soldier, they carefully placed Hazelden on the stretcher. Many, many times that day Zaidos had been thankful for his steel muscles and man's stature, and now he was more thankful than ever. With all the care possible they carried their burden over the rough, uneven ground back to the First Aid Station.

Zaidos' heart sang within him. The impossible had happened. He was bringing Tony Hazelden back to the girl who loved him, and Hazelden loved her. Zaidos knew that, not only because of the picture Tony carried, but because no one could have seen Hazelden's face when he spoke Helen's name and not know that his heart was breaking for her. Zaidos knew that Hazelden's life hung on the merest thread, but he stoutly believed that his love for Helen would keep him alive until he reached her, at least, and after that Zaidos was willing to trust Helen to do the rest. Zaidos watched his helpless burden with anxiety as they approached the shelter. When they arrived he gave the word to Velo and they gently lowered the stretcher to the ground.

"Stay here a minute," he ordered Velo, and slid down into the underground room. There was a lull in the dug-out as all the men had for the minute been cared for and sent back to the rear, which always is done as much as possible in the darkness.

The doctor and his aids, resting on the hard planks that served as seats, sat upright against the dirt wall, sound asleep. Nurse Helen stood at the white table cleaning the instruments. Zaidos scarcely recognized her. She was haggard and worn as a woman old in years. Color, energy, life itself seemed to have been drained out of her in the terrible ordeal of the past day. Zaidos hesitated. He was filled with fears all at once. It seemed so like planning the meeting of a couple of ghosts. Hazelden, unconscious and at the point of death, and Helen fagged out, worn, and looking like an old woman.

He went to her, tenderly laying a stained hand on hers.

"Helen," he said, speaking rapidly, "I've no time to break the news to you. The most impossible sort of a thing has happened. You have got to hear it all at once, because there is a man almost dying out there and I've got to hurry. You know the reserves that came in to-day? Now hang on, Helen! Captain Hazelden was with them. Oh, Helen," as she wavered and almost fell, "if you go to pieces you will always regret it!"

"Dead?" she murmured.

"No, but he's outside awfully shot, and he has been keeping himself alive just to see you. You will have to help, Helen, if you can."

He left her standing beside the table. She could not call the doctor. She could not speak. They came in with the stretcher, and as she saw its ghastly burden and gave a quick professional glance at his maimed body, the tender woman and the trained nurse struggled for the mastery. The nurse won. Swiftly she prepared the table, called the doctor and helped to lift him from the stretcher.

Zaidos and Velo left to rescue the man whose weight had kept the captain from bleeding to death. His scalp wound was serious but not dangerous, Zaidos decided, and they returned to the First Aid with lighter hearts.

The room was empty. Hazelden was not there. Zaidos' heart dropped. Had he died?

Helen answered the question in his face. She came to meet Zaidos. Her eyes shone, her cheeks were the loveliest pink. Her step was light.

"Well?" said Zaidos.

"More than well!" said Helen. "Oh, John, it is wonderful! Wonderful! And you brought me my happiness! I am to be transferred to the field hospital tomorrow, where I can nurse him myself. He will live; he must live! We could not talk, but he knew me. And I know everything is all right!"

"Certainly it's all right!" said Zaidos. "Didn't I tell you so? I knew just how it would be," and the hero of a single ballroom looked as wise as only a fellow could who had been dead-crazy over a girl all one evening.

"What are you going to do about things?" asked Zaidos. "Go on being engaged?"

"Indeed I'm not!" said Helen as she bathed the soldier's head. "Not at all! Just as soon as he can hold my hand, we will be married by the chaplain. I'll never, never risk another misunderstanding!"

"See that you don't!" said Zaidos quite gruffly.



CHAPTER IX

VISIONS

While Zaidos, aided by Velo, continued his heart-rending task among the dead and wounded on that bloody field, now applying the tourniquet to some emptying artery, now administering, drop by drop, the stimulant needed to hold life in some poor fellow, hurrying back with others on their stretcher, or giving way to the fearless and pitiful priests who moved among the dying—while all these things happened, it would be well to pause and reflect on the wise preparation which had made it possible for Zaidos to do well his allotted task.

As a Boy Scout, and in the extra work of school, he had taken a keen interest in the Red Cross work. Zaidos was the sort of a fellow who takes a keen pleasure in doing things well. He stood well in his classes always, not for the benefit of school marks, but because he thought that if he studied at all, he might as well be thorough about it and try to get at what the "book Johnny," as the boys called the textbook writers, really was driving at. It was the same with athletics. He had jumped higher and run faster than anyone else in school, not so much because he was quick and light and agile, but because, having found out that he could run and jump and put up a good boost for the team at other sports, he practiced every spare moment he could find. Zaidos was always trying to see if he could break his own records. He got a lot of fun out of it. It was like a good game of solitaire. He was not dependent on some other fellow. The other fellow was incidental, a sort of side issue and like a good pace-maker. Of course you had to beat him, but the sport was in coming in ahead of your own time.

It was for this that Zaidos had always worked. It had kept him from feeling the petty jealousies and envy which retard the progress of so many of the fellows. Racing with himself, in Red Cross drills, or running, racing, riding or studying, his rival was always present, always ready and willing to take another "try" at something. It was like having a punching bag in his room. Every time he passed it he took a whack or two, and developed his muscles accordingly.

So, in this unexpected and supreme test of his life, Zaidos found himself fit. As the work went on and on, endlessly as it seemed, Zaidos found that his brain commenced to work independently of his hands. The unbelievable wounds of war no longer shocked his deadened nerves. His hands worked more and more accurately and rapidly, but on the inside of his brain was a sort of screen on which flashed the moving picture of his life.

They started from his little boyhood, when he first crossed the ocean up to the time of the last crossing, at the sad summons which had taken him to his dying father. No real moving picture, thought Zaidos, had ever been screened with so many thrills and exciting incidents as the real life-film through which he saw himself rapidly moving. Here and there on the bloody field he puzzled it out for himself, finding that the plot was complete, and that Velo, his cousin, must be the villain.

Zaidos was still ignorant of the fact that Velo had stolen the papers, but that Velo hated him and would be glad enough to get him out of the way grew clearer and clearer, in spite of the apparent friendliness with which he had treated him up to the present time. But now, hour by hour, Zaidos was conscious of a sort of sour look of hatred which seemed to grow plainer and plainer in Velo's sharp face. Zaidos had an uncomfortable feeling that he must keep a watchful eye on Velo. It was nothing but an instinct, but even so, he felt it, and feeling it, was ashamed.

So the time wore on.

Bending over a soldier with a gaping, bloody hole in his side, Zaidos turned to the hospital corps pouch spread open beside him, and felt for a roll of gauze bandage. One little roll remained.

"Get back to the hospital and get another outfit of gauze and tape," he ordered Velo.

Velo stood up and straightened his back. He looked down at Zaidos, then his gaze traveled to the unconscious soldier.

"What do you bother with him for?" he said heartlessly. "It's no use. I'm going to quit. What's the use of working myself to death?"

"Going to desert?" asked Zaidos coldly. He was holding the hurt soldier in a position where he could treat the wound quickly.

"I suppose so," said Velo. "This isn't my fight!"

"Look here," said Zaidos, "I don't care what you do. If you desert and are caught at it, and are shot, it is no affair of mine. I wash my hands of you. But for the sake of your own manhood get me that bandage while I take care of this man. Don't be such a cad, Velo! Get me the things I need, and then let's talk this thing out later. But don't do anything to disgrace the family. After all, you know, if anything happens to me, why, you are the head of the house."

Zaidos glanced suddenly up at his cousin, and surprised in his face a look that once and for all swept away all the kindly doubts he had cherished. Velo's countenance was so full of cold speculation and deadly hatred that Zaidos started. Then he pulled himself together, and looked Velo in the eye.

"Get the bandages!" he said coldly and Velo, as though controlled by some superior force, turned to do as he was told.

As he hurried across the rough, blood-stained field, he too saw pictures in his mind. He saw the contrasting fates, either of which he thought might be his. The obscure life of a poor relation, dependent on a relative's kindness, and the life of luxury if all that relative had should come to him. A better boy could have planned to build up a career for himself, but Velo could not or would not. He was like a thief who would rather steal the dollar which he could go to work and earn honestly.

Velo had become desperate in the last few days. As he hurried on, he was seized with a sudden determination to end everything. He went into the First Aid shelter and secured the bandages from the supply table and went back, a dreadful resolve taking form as he went. He found Zaidos still bending over the wounded soldier.

"Well, you hurried, didn't you?" he said, looking up with a nod of thanks as Velo handed him the bandages. He went on rapidly, securing the gaping wound so that they could shift the torn body to the stretcher.

"It's funny," he said as he worked, "that we don't run across the doctors oftener out here. Of course they are all at work just as hard as we are, and a good deal harder, poor fellows, but it does seem as though every time we get hold of a case that is a good deal too hard for us to tackle, why, then there isn't a soul in sight to help. I'm so afraid of doing something that will make somebody heal wrong, or limp or something."

"Be a good way to take revenge on somebody," said Velo.

"Why you—" Zaidos could not finish. "How the deuce do you ever think up such stuff? For goodness' sake, don't say it to me! You make me sick!" He bent over his patient again, and Velo looked idly about.

At his feet lay a revolver. He picked it up. It was loaded. Idly he tried the trigger. It worked. He looked at Zaidos. How he hated him! They seemed all alone on that field of dead and dying. The tide had swept away and left them there with their work.

There was a sudden red mist over Velo's sight. . . . Kneeling in the light of the big flashlight, Zaidos loomed up, a clear, clean cut figure with the velvet blackness of the night behind him. Velo brushed his hand before his eyes. Zaidos was putting the last pin in the neat dressing he had applied to the wound. There was a thread of hope for the man. Zaidos smiled. Velo knew he would get up—

The revolver sounded like a cannon. Zaidos, unhurt, got to his feet. He pressed a hand to his side. Velo watched him with fascinated eyes. Zaidos looked down. There was a cut across the service blouse between his sleeve and body, right under his left arm.

Zaidos stared first at Velo, then at the revolver still in his hand.

"How did that happen?" he demanded in a low, tense voice.

Velo swallowed and cleared his throat.

"The thing went off," he said huskily.

"Well, it came near doing for me," said Zaidos, still staring suspiciously at Velo. "You let me have that revolver! Yon are too funny with things to suit me."

Velo, still pale, smiled a wry, twisted smile. "I'm sorry," he lied. "I don't see how it happened. It must be out of order."

"Give it to me!" said Zaidos, "and take the front of this stretcher. I've got to look out for accidents, it seems. I never saw anything so careless in my life. You have just got to be careful, Velo! I won't stand for it! This isn't the first time I've nearly come to harm through your carelessness, if you want to call it that. I tell you I won't stand for it! Mind, I don't make any accusations; and I don't claim you are to blame for a lot of things that have happened to me lately, but if things don't stop, why, you are going to be sorry! There won't be any revolvers going off, and your bed won't go down, and your medicine won't get exchanged for poison, like it sometimes happens. I shall just take you out back of the next wire entanglement, and I will give you a good beating up, Velo. I remember I used to have to do it when we were about four years old. It used to do you a lot of good, and I suppose all these years since you have had no one to keep you where you belonged. I won't do this, you understand, unless you get careless with guns and things again. You hear, Velo?"

Velo made no reply.

The two boys carefully bearing the stretcher tramped along in silence.

"You hear, Velo?" said Zaidos again. "Honestly, the more I think of it, the madder I get!"

"You stop your nonsense!" said Velo suddenly over his shoulder. His voice took on a whine. "What makes you act so, Zaidos? I'm your cousin, and I should think you would be ashamed of the things you say to me, just as if I haven't stuck right beside you every minute, and as if I had not done everything in the world that I possibly could do to help you. You don't treat me well, Zaidos!"

"I do, too," said Zaidos, stung by this injustice. "I should think I did; but how do you treat me?"

They reached the entrance to the First Aid Station and gave their unconscious burden into the hands waiting to receive him. The doctor scanned the wound.

"Well, boys," he said, "you have saved this man all right." He turned the bright light on the still, white face. "My heavens!" he exclaimed.

"Who is it?" asked the nurse.

Velo looked at the face, and spoke before the doctor could reply.

"I know him," he said. "His name is John Smith."

The doctor was working rapidly with restoratives.

"John Smith?" he repeated. "This is the Prince of Teck's oldest son, and his brother was killed an hour ago. We must keep this fellow alive," he went on, doggedly. "First time I met him he was just an hour old. He won't go out of this world yet if I can help it!"

The boys went outside and for a moment sat down on the ground to rest.

"What do you suppose made him do that?" said Velo musingly.

"Do what?" asked Zaidos.

"Why," said Velo, "I asked what his name was one night and he said John Smith. I think that old doctor is making a mistake."

"What does it matter?" said Zaidos. "He would make just the same effort to save the plain John Smiths as he would to save the princes of the world."

"Pooh!" said Velo, sneering. "I guess not! Why should he? He knows a thing or two and you will find it out some day. Why, nobody does anything for anybody unless they get paid for it somehow or other!"

"Oh, say," said Zaidos, getting up and striking one clenched, fist violently into the other, "I wouldn't have your little bit of a soul for anything on earth! I wouldn't have your mean, little bit of a suspicious, ungenerous mind! I hate to remind a fellow like you of anything so fine, but how about my father? What pay, pay, mind you, did he ever get for taking care of you? What did he ever get for starting that colony of sick people up on the mountain back of his hunting lodge, with a doctor right there, and a nurse or two paid by father? Do you suppose it made him feel good to see them tottering all over the preserve where he could no longer shoot, for fear of hitting some of the poor wretches?"

"No," agreed Velo, "he didn't get a thing out of all that, and I always thought that colony for the sick was the silliest thing I ever heard of. I'll tell you right now when I get hold of things—" he caught himself up quickly. "I mean, of course, when you get hold of things, if you do as I would do, you will send those people packing back to their slums as fast as they can go. As far as his doing for me, why, I'm one of the family and he sort of had to. It is a duty. Besides, do you suppose it was very much fun sticking around that house, quiet as the grave, nothing going on, no one coming to see your father but old, grey-headed men and women forever fixing up charities?"

"That's all right," said Zaidos. "Do you know what I am going to do as soon as I get out of this? I'm going to cut right back to America and study as hard as I can. Then as soon as the war is over, I will come back here and straighten everything up. I will of course keep the title. You can't give that away, and I wouldn't want to. I'm proud of my name. It is an honorable one and it has been kept clean by the men before me; but I mean to give Greece everything I can turn into money. Then I'll take enough to start me, go back to America again, and cut out a career for myself. I'm going to be a doctor and as good a doctor as ever lived if study will do it. That's the monument I mean to give my father and my mother."

He gave a jerk of the head toward Velo, who sat upright before him.

"How does that strike you, old top?" he asked and climbed down into the First Aid pit.

Left alone, Velo sat thinking. Then he rolled over on his face and beat the earth with his fists. Once more the films flew along, in the moving picture of his mind. He saw the wealth of the Zaidos house—gold, gold! a stream of gold flowing and flowing away from him! He saw the bright lights, the dancing, drinking, all the carousels he had so often dreamed of, slipping out of his grasp. What possible hope could a fellow like himself have of keeping on the right side of anyone like Zaidos? He smiled when he thought what Zaidos would say if he could know or guess what Velo's life had been. What would he do if he ever found out how he had treated Zaidos' long suffering father? And Velo did not try to deceive himself. He knew perfectly well that back there in Saloniki, there were people who would jump at a chance to get even with him, and who would give Zaidos an account of meanness and wrong-doing that would cause him to kick Velo out of the house.

Velo began to hate himself for the uncertainty in putting off what to him was a disagreeable necessity. Once more he went over the situation. It seemed as though he had gone over it a dozen times, a million times. It all ended at the blank wall which was Zaidos. Zaidos must be removed.

Now it is a well-known fact that we are what our thoughts make us. Our minds are like our houses, our homes. We do not have to entertain unwelcome guests. We do not have to invite them there. It may be that we feel obliged to treat everyone whom we meet at our games or in school or at work with common politeness. No matter how we despise a man, we can't very well go up to him in the street and say, "Here, I don't like your style," and proceed to knock him out with a good right-hander. Naturally it won't do. But we need not give the bounder the freedom of our homes. So with our thoughts. It is only when we bring them in and grow intimate with them, and make them part of ourselves that they begin to harm us.

Velo, too evil and too lazy to close the door of his mind on common thoughts and low desires, had grown more and more like his unworthy guests. And now instead of kicking the whole mob into the outer darkness, he lay there, face down, listening to their evil whispers.

"Get rid of Zaidos," they said over and over. "Get rid of him. Who will know? Don't you hate him? You ought to! Just because he is the one who really owns everything, is that any reason why you should get out and work for an honest living? You don't want to bother with an honest living. You want to live soft and lie easy. Get rid of Zaidos! Now is your chance! It is your only chance. You know how he makes friends everywhere. He is straight as a string. He does not lie. He wouldn't do a mean action. Fellows like us are afraid of that sort. Get rid of him. Now—now!"

So the whispering in Velo's mind went on, and he listened and listened, and presently he sat up. On his face was written what is written on every man's face when he gives the keys of his soul over to Evil.

Zaidos came climbing out.

"Well, the doctor is going to save your friend Smith," he said cheerfully. "Good work, too! One of the nicest fellows I ever knew, that Smith. Too bad about his little brother. I never saw two fellows so crazy over each other. It seems they are the last of the family. Doctor says this fellow will never be able to fight again, but he will get perfectly well in time. I don't believe it myself. I don't believe any of the men wounded go will ever get all over it, but we can hope so, anyhow. You see I feel as though I knew this man Smith real well because he knows a schoolmate of mine, Nickell-Wheelerson his name is. He was just a plain boy when we were at school, but he came over with me, and now he's a lord. Poor old Nick, how he will hate it!"

Zaidos paused, and stared into the night.

Velo scanned him under lowering brows.

"Get it over soon—soon!" whispered the impatient Evil in his soul.

Velo put a hand on his breast where the papers were hidden. Zaidos stooped and tightened the strap of his puttee. Velo watched him sneeringly. Zaidos was so maddeningly unconcerned. Velo wondered if he could be near anyone who hated him as he hated Zaidos and not feel and fear it. The urge of Evil became like a heavy hand knocking on his heart. He almost feared Zaidos would hear it. "Now—now—now!" it went.

"Come on, Zaidos," he said, standing up. "Let's get to work. I suppose we have an all-night task before us."

Zaidos yawned. "I thought so, too," he said; "but it seems they are looking for a bad day to-morrow and we have been relieved from duty for the night. A new shift goes into the field in ten minutes, and we go back to the rear to one of the farm-houses there to rest until ten to-morrow. Come on, let's start."

"To-morrow, then," whispered Velo to the Evil in his soul.



CHAPTER X

VICTORY

The boys walked slowly back, picking their way as well as they could in the darkness, occasionally taking to the zig-zag trenches when the surface paths were too obscure. Everywhere men were sleeping, rolled up in their blankets and lying uncomfortably along the bottom of the trenches or out on the ground under the stars. The boys did not talk. Zaidos was busy thinking of the present, with all its tragic incidents, and occasionally a funny happening to lighten the gloom. He thought of Helen, and wondered how her well-beloved patient was progressing. He had a sort of "hunch" as the fellows at school used to say, that Helen was a happy girl, and certainly, if the man was conscious at all, he was happy, too.

About four hundred yards from the lines they found the farm-house to which they had been sent. It was practically a ruin. The roof was gone, excepting over one room where a fire burned in a big fireplace, and where a great kettle swung on a heavy chain. This room had had one side blown out of it, so it was not much better off except in the matter of a rainstorm, than the other rooms that had four sides but no ceilings. It was too open to the weather for much use, however, and the small group of soldiers present were quartered in a cellar close by.

A young sentinel showed Zaidos and Velo the way down, and they rolled up in their blankets and tried to sleep. It was a difficult thing to do. Zaidos found that the steady tramping and kneeling of the day and evening had made his leg, so recently healed, ache badly. It throbbed and he turned and twisted in an effort to find a comfortable position.

Velo's head ached splittingly, and he lay staring into the darkness, keeping company ever with the evil thoughts in his heart. He slept finally, however, and did not awake until Zaidos shook him by the shoulder and told him it was time for breakfast. The three-sided room with the fireplace had been turned into a kitchen, and the cooks were busy there when the boys went over. The meal tasted good, and although the coffee was thick and muddy, the boys partook of it eagerly. It was at least hot and sweet.

Velo gritted his teeth with exasperation as Zaidos strolled out and at once spoke to a soldier who sat by the door with a couple of letters and papers in his lap. It was so exactly like Zaidos to get acquainted without a moment's delay. He smiled at the soldier, and in reply the young fellow made a place for him on the bench.

"Sit down, won't you?" he said. "Mail has come, and I got more than my share."

"Glad you fared well," said Zaidos, taking the offered seat. "I see you have a paper. May I look at it?"

"Certainly!" said the soldier. "There is nothing in it. The war news is so censored over home now that you can't get anything much out of the papers. I like 'em because I can read the home advertisements, and see notices of people I know, and watch what's playing at the theatres. Makes me forget this rotten hole for awhile."

"That's so," agreed Zaidos. "But just think how crazy all the people at home must be all the while to hear from you fellows at the front."

"I think they are," agreed the soldier. "I have a brother in France, too, and father has just sent me a letter from him. It's fun to compare experiences. Want to read it? You may if you care to."

"Of course I'd like to!" said Zaidos with his ready friendliness. "There is no one to write to me anywhere except some schoolmates over in America, and I don't suppose I will hear from them for months." He took the closely written sheets of thin paper, and read the letter, appreciating the spirit in which it was offered him.

"My dear Father," it ran. "I received your letter and note last night, and Auntie's parcel the night before. Thank you both very much for same. It is good of you to us both, but do not spend too much money. Hard times are coming on, I imagine. The kippers were grand. Six of us had a great tea on them in the wine cellar of a shattered farm-house where we are for four nights after four days in the trenches. Then we go back to the fighting line for another four days and nights. This place we are at, in the cellar, is a keep with emergency stores and loop holes, and is armored. Twenty-five of us have to keep it at all costs, should the enemy come over the line, which is perhaps four hundred yards away. The bally place is overrun with rats. They run all over your body and head at night, and I have to sleep with my overcoat tucked over my head to prevent them touching the bare skin.

"Up at the trenches, I was four days and nights stationed about sixty yards from the Huns doing sentry on and off day and night the whole time, waiting with bombs and bayonet in case they attempted to take it, and now on return here have done three more night-guards and then no more sleep again hardly for four more nights, when we return to the firing line.

"It is a hard life, isn't it? For in between, one is sent off on all sorts of fatigues, drawing rations, sand bags, trench boards, etc., etc.

"I must some time see that new Turkey carpet. The only one I see now is sand bags. If there is a big move shortly, which seems more than likely, it may delay our leave as I guess all the troopers would be wanted in that case, but I am looking forward tremendously to seeing you all again.

"Must conclude now, dear father.

"Much love to all from your son, DICK."

"P. S. We dug up some dead Prussian Guards the other day. There has been some great fighting here and may be again. I don't know what I should do without the candles and matches you send me. They keep me going nicely.

"I have just thought perhaps my letter does not seem very cheerful; so I must tell you we have lots of fun in between the serious parts of the game. Last rest, I had some great French feeds (for about one franc) in a town near by. Got pally with six French gendarmes and hope to see them again when I have another spell off.

"I guess they could take me around the town if I wanted to see the sights. Also at all villages where we stay, I make friends with some of the cottagers, and get lots of coffee and salads and washing done for me. I am getting quite a reputation for finding places to obtain a little meal to vary the Army rations.

"Cigs are best in tins; in boxes they get very damp. Cheer on! Good luck to you.

DICK."

Zaidos handed back the letter with a smile.

"Thank you very much," he said. "That's certainly a fine letter. It was nice of you to share it with me."

"That's all right," said the boy. "Everyone is glad to read every other fellow's letter out here, whether he knows anything about the people or not. We get so few letters. The people at home send us candles and matches and kippers, as you see from the letter, and they send lots of cigarettes to my brother. I don't smoke. They send us paper and envelopes, too. You know all our letters are opened, don't you? I don't see that it makes much difference. I've always thought that I could see how I could write a pretty innocent looking letter if I was a spy.

"They have had a lot of trouble with spies at Verdun, where my brother is. Why, would you believe it, the Germans have come right inside the French and English lines in broad daylight to do their spying! One bold ruse they worked, just once was to rig up one of their automobiles to look like our ambulances. That car carried six Germans, all dressed as English soldiers, and once inside our lines they went dashing around as aids and orderlies.

"All went well with them, they had seen the whole layout and gone down to the very last trench, when one of them stumbled and out came a thoughtless 'Mein Gott!' for he thought he had broken his ankle. Now of course that would have been a catastrophe indeed, but so was that slip into the German tongue. A kindly Providence saw to it that an alert Tommy had heard, and in a trice those six make-believe English soldiers had been rounded up and were on their way to headquarters. Next morning there was a sunrise party, for those Germans must be taught it isn't ever healthy for them inside our lines."

"Indeed they must!" agreed Zaidos heartily.

"We have got to beat them in the end," said the English soldier with the quiet sureness that has so often helped England to victory. "But they are sure as sure that they will beat us, so they keep hammering away and they will keep it up just as long as their men last."

As if in answer to his last statement a shell struck the earth twenty yards away, and exploded. Another followed, and fell in almost exactly the same place.

"See that?" said the Englishman. "Two days ago one of our best guns was there where those shells have fallen. How did they know just where it was stationed? We had not fired it. And it was ambushed from the airships. Pretty rotten, work, eh?"

As he spoke, a snapping, long-drawn snarl punctuated by deeper roars told that the rapid-fire guns and the howitzers were awake along the English lines. A stir of preparation passed like a wave over the resting and lounging soldiers. Two great Zeppelins appeared overhead. They wheeled closer and closer. Even at so great a distance, the roar of their engines was terrific.

Zaidos turned and shook hands warmly with the soldier whose letter he had shared.

"Good-bye, and good luck!" he said heartily. "Hope we will meet some day again."

"Good-bye to you!" cried his new friend.

Zaidos, calling Velo, jumped into the trench and ran along its uneven zigzags, on and on, the roar of battle sounding ever louder, until he reached the cook house, and turning into the arm leading to the First Aid Station, he raced into the room and reported to the doctor.

Velo was at his heels. Once more the evil in Velo's soul was crying to him, shouting to him, "This is your day—this is your day!"

"I won't forget," commented Velo aloud; and Zaidos said "What?"

They buckled on their aid kits, seeing that they were supplied with everything. They wore orderly kits now. They contained chloroform in a case, a roll of wire gauze, a long rubber bandage, and a tin which contained vials of hyperdermic solutions. These were only for the use of the field surgeons whom they chanced to meet and who frequently had to call on the Red Cross orderlies and stretcher bearers for supplies. Then in the next compartment was the hypodermic syringe, and beside it a flask for aromatic spirits of ammonia. There was a knife and a pair of surgical scissors. After having dropped his scissors a dozen times or so, Zaidos had taken the precaution to tie them to his pouch with a long, fine string.

There was gauze, eight packets of it; four first aid packets complete, six bandages, and two diagnosis tags and pencils. When there was time, it was sometimes advisable to tag the wounded men. It made them get moved quicker when the patient finally reached the operating room.

A spool of adhesive plaster was perhaps one of the most useful things included, and there were pins and ligatures, and a small pocket lantern which Zaidos at least had never had occasion to use.

Velo looked carefully at his own kit. He did not intend to be caught in any carelessness or neglect of duty. He had cast aside as unsafe the idea of skipping away. It was more dangerous than the falling shells. He, like many another, had become calloused. On battlefields men move with as much of a sense of security as though they were invisible. It is not so much that they are not afraid as that they grow into a feeling that the dreadful din, the rattle and bang and dirt and blood, the anguish of men and horses, the distorted and ghastly deaths, will pass them by. The whine of bullets, and the spiteful snarl of exploding shells seems as much an incident as the tin rainfall and the wooden thunder on the stage.

Zaidos noticed this, and felt it himself. He saw men go singing along the trenches to their death, singing love songs and tender little ballads that had to do with flowers and larks and English lanes in May. And most of all he noticed that the face of every wounded man held a look of surprise in greater or less degree; of amazement, as though the outraged body said, "Has this thing come to me? Impossible!" The look was on the dead lying sprawled and twisted in the last silent paralysis of humanity. And although the dead and dying and wounded lay like warnings of a coming fate, although men tossed and reared grotesquely, and shattered horses screamed shrilly in throes of blind agony, the unhurt thousands moved on or lay in their trenches giving fire for fire, death for death without a quiver of concern.

Out into the worst of it went the boys together, Zaidos filled with the high courage of one who does his duty whole-heartedly, and is too busy with the task to wonder at his own fate, Velo with the unconcern of the panther who creeps sure-footedly along the crumbling ledge after his prey. With the noise, the sights and confusion of battle, a kind of madness grew in Velo. The words "To-day, to-day, to-day!" made a sort of song within him. He had all the time in the world. He liked to see Zaidos working, working, tiring himself out. It didn't really matter when he put Zaidos out. He only knew that sooner or later he would do it. He had become a criminal. The evil had wrecked his soul.

The boys worked with furious zeal. When the final toll of this dreadful war is taken, high up on the lists of fame, supreme in the immortal and shining roster of the saints, should stand the names of the men and women of the Red Cross. The zeal of fighting could not uphold them. The lust of battle could not inflame their courage. It was theirs to walk unguarded in the red rain of death, to kneel where the shells fell thickest, to pass through the line of deadly fire with their pitiful burdens.

Doing only good, bringing relief and rescue, they, too, have fallen, hundreds of them, victims of a struggle in which they had no active part.

Zaidos and that dark shadow, Velo, knelt beside a wounded soldier, and strove to save his life, while a black robed priest knelt beside the conscious man. He made the responses of his Church clearly and evenly. He listened while the chaplain commended him to the mercy of God. With an even voice he gave his name and sent a last passionately loving message to one he loved. Then while the boys still doggedly strove to stay his passing, he began to speak. His voice changed to the shrill, clear tones of childhood. He forgot the sonorous Latin of a moment past. He looked up and folded his hands.

"Mary, Mother, meek and mild, Hear me, then a little child—"

He went on with the childish prayer. Velo stood up. Zaidos, kneeling, shook his head, waited until the voice trailed into silence, and folded his kit. They had come too late. The priest stood for a moment in prayer. The boys moved on, but Zaidos looked back. He was just in time to see the priest, with that strange look of wonder dawning on his face, sink slowly to his knees, and droop across the dead man's breast. A bullet was in his heart.

"I wish it would end," cried Zaidos passionately.

Velo smiled.

"Don't do that!" cried Zaidos wildly. "You are not half tending to your work. Get busy with this man here." He knelt beside a soldier as he spoke, and tried to change his position so he could tie up a gushing wound. Zaidos, who had done all the heavy work, was almost exhausted. His hands trembled a little. Time had rushed by, or else it had stood perfectly still since the first shot split the morning stillness. He had not eaten; he couldn't. On one of the trips with the heavy stretcher the doctor had given him something in a glass to take, but he had put it down for a moment, and Velo had spilled it. It had not seemed worth while to ask for more.

The battle roared around them. The enemy had pressed through the first wire entanglement, and a terrific hand-to-hand conflict was in progress. Then men charged with bayonet on gun in the right hand, a short, keen knife in their teeth, and on their left hands a band set with spiked steel knuckles. They leaped into the trenches, struck once with the bayonet, let the musket go, and continued the fight with knife and knuckles. The boys seemed to be the center of a horrible whirlpool or eddy of fighting.

"Give me a bandage!" screamed Zaidos.

Velo, all unconscious of the battle about, stood looking down at Zaidos. His bloodshot eyes were narrowed to slits, his lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl. In his hand was a revolver. He leaned forward a little. He spoke, but in the din Zaidos could not hear his words. He could read the twisting lips, however.

"I've got the papers!" was what he said. He took careful, open aim with the revolver, and before Zaidos could move or spring, he fired straight at Zaidos' face!

Then he stood looking at the fallen boy. Zaidos lay on his back, arms spread wide, knees partly bent under him. Somehow he looked very young. Velo, once more conscious of the roar of guns, looked about him. The battle raged madly. As if drawn by a magnet, his gaze traveled back to the face of his victim. Sure enough, he had killed him. Zaidos was out of his way forever. He felt in his blouse where the precious papers were, then, moved by some strange impulse, he took them out, and held them up before the unseeing eyes of his cousin.

"All here; all here!" he said thickly. "Now I'm Zaidos; I'm head of the house!" Still holding the papers in his hand, he threw the revolver far from him. It had done its work. He nodded to Zaidos. "All here!" he repeated, fingering the pocket. "I'm—"

Something or someone seemed to strike him a violent blow in the back. It surprised him. He turned to see the offender. There was no one near. The tide of battle had swept past. He looked inquiringly at Zaidos, and idly dropped the papers on the ground, as he put a hand to his breast. Suddenly he lost interest in everything but the cause of the blow. He wondered what in the world had hit him. Not a bullet. Surely a bullet did not make you feel so numb and queer! He balanced back and forth as though he was walking a tight rope. Still staring at Zaidos, and still pressing a hand to his chest, he went slowly, very slowly, to his knees.

"That's strange," he said to Zaidos. Then without warning, he coughed. It tore, and ripped, and rent him with mortal agony. He screamed aloud. He clutched with both hands at his breast, screamed, and screamed and screamed, and so went slowly down and down, a million miles into blackness, and lay without further motion, his head against Zaidos' knee.



CHAPTER XI

DAYS OF WAITING

Inch by inch, step by step, yard after yard, the enemy forced the English back. They reached the second line of wire entanglements, where for awhile the battle raged, while Zaidos and Velo, like other thousands of silent and bloody figures, lay in strange, distorted groups.

At the second entanglement, however, something seemed to happen. Perhaps the enemy's charge had exhausted them, perhaps because a bulldog courage always fills the British. The tide turned. Once more the ground was covered. The first entanglement was reached and crossed. The havoc grew; the rout was turned into a victory. The Allies had won the day!

They followed the fleeing enemy, stubbornly hammering their rear as they retreated, while a thin sprinkle of Red Cross aids and doctors and nurses commenced to appear on that dreadful field. They moved here and there, clear stars in the dark sky of history.

One of them stopped to bandage a head where a clean line of blood showed a deep furrow in the side. When the wound was bandaged, the surgeon administered a dose of medicine, and in a moment Zaidos opened his eyes, and looked curiously up at the doctor.

"You are all right," said the doctor. "Nothing but a scratch on the head. Lie still and wig-wag the ambulance when it comes along."

He moved rapidly away, and Zaidos obeyed his parting order. In fact he was not able to move. Velo's bullet had cut close to the skull and Zaidos had lost much blood. He was conscious also of a pain in his broken leg, but could not move to see what caused it. Finally the aching grew so intense that it drove him to an upright position, although for a moment things whirled, and he was forced to close his eyes. When he looked he saw Velo, the anguish and pallor and amazement of death written on his face, lying doubled against Zaidos' knee. Carefully he worked himself free, to find that a bullet had struck his leg while he was unconscious, and had broken the small bone below the knee. It was the broken leg, at that. He straightened himself as well as he could, and looked at Velo. He commenced to remember. It came back bit by bit; the fight, and Velo's treachery. Last of all he remembered what Velo had said. "I have the papers!" So it was Velo all the time! Zaidos could not imagine how Velo had secured them. He knew when he had lost them that night in the barracks at Saloniki. Velo certainly had not been there. His hurt head beat painfully, and it was difficult for him to think. If Velo had the papers, however, he must get them. Velo was dead apparently. Zaidos knew that look. The papers were his. He must take them before someone came and carried him away. He knew what Velo's resting place would be, and shuddered. Slowly, painfully, he shifted his position until he lay close at his cousin's side. Supporting himself on his elbow, with his free hand he felt in the blood-stained blouse. The pockets were empty. Zaidos felt again. Then it seemed as though he could feel a faint heartbeat. It was so feeble that when Zaidos laid his hand on the torn breast and waited, he could feel no stir. He managed to get at his Aid kit, however, and drop by drop coaxed down a dose of strong restorative. He pressed a pad of gauze against the wound, and secured it with adhesive tape. He could see that the wound came through from the back, but he did not dare turn him over. Presently a faint sigh parted the lips, and Zaidos administered another dose.

Velo lived!

He opened his eyes presently, and looked dully at Zaidos. Then he recognized him, and a wild look crossed his face.