Ruth Fielding at the War Front | Page 2

the hill steadily, on
the apex of which, among giant forest trees, loomed the turrets and
towers of a large chateau.

Again the buzzing of a motor broke the near-by stillness, while the
great guns boomed in the distance. The sudden activity on the front
must portend some important movement, or why should so many flying
machines be drawn toward this sector?
But in a minute she realized that this was not an aeroplane she heard.
Debouching into sight from the fringing thickets came a powerful
motor car, its forefront armored. She could barely see the head and
shoulders of the man behind the steering wheel.
Down the hill plunged the car, and the girl quickly stepped to the side
of the lane and waited for it to pass. The roar of its muffler was
deafening. In a moment she saw that the tonneau of the gray car was
filled with uniformed men.
They were officers in khaki, the insignia of their several grades
scarcely distinguishable against the dull color of their clothing. How
different from the gay uniforms of the French Army Corps, which, until
of late, the girl of the Red Cross had been used to seeing in this
locality.
Their faces were different, too. Gray, lean, hard-bitten faces, their
eyebrows so light and sparse that it seemed their eyes were hard stones
which never seemed to shift their straight-ahead gaze. Yet each man in
the tonneau and the orderly beside the driver on the front seat saluted
the Red Cross girl as she stood by the laneside.
In another half-minute the car had turned at the bottom of the hill and
was out of sight.
She sighed again as she plodded on. Now, indeed, was the spring gone
from her limbs and her expression was weary with a sadness that,
although not personal, was heavy upon her.
Her thought was with the aeroplane and the motor car and with the
thundering guns at the battle front, not many miles away. Yet she
hastened her steps up this grassy lane toward the chateau, in quite the
opposite direction.

The sudden stir of the military life of this sector portended something
unusual. An advance of the enemy or an attempt to make a drive upon
the Allies' works. In any case, down in the little, low-lying town behind
her, there might be increased need of hospital workers. She must,
before long, be once more at the hospital to meet the first ambulances
rolling in from the field hospitals or from the dressing stations at the
very front.
She reached the summit of the ridge, over which the lane passed to the
valley on the west side of the hill. The high arch of the gateway of the
chateau was in sight.
Coming from that direction, walking easily, yet quickly, was the lean
military figure of a young man who switched the roadside weed stalks
with a light cane. He looked up quickly as the girl approached, and his
rather somber face lighted as though the sight of her gave him pleasure.
Yet his gaze was respectful. He was handsome, keenly intelligent
looking and not typically French, although he was dressed in the
uniform of a branch of the French service, wearing a major's chevrons.
As the Red Cross girl came nearer, he put his heels together smartly,
removed his kepi, and bowed stiffly from the waist. It was not a
Frenchman's bow.
The girl responded with a quiet bend of her head, but she passed him
by without giving him any chance to speak. He followed her only with
his eyes--and that but for a moment; then he went on down the lane, his
stride growing momentarily longer until he passed from view.
A cry from the direction of the broad gateway ahead next aroused the
attention of the girl in the Red Cross uniform. She looked up to see
another girl running to meet her.
This was a short, rather plump French girl, whose eyes shone with
excitement, and who ran with hands outstretched to meet those of the
Red Cross girl. The latter was some years the older.
"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth! Mademoiselle Ruth Fielding!" cried the

French girl eagerly. "Did you meet him? Ah-h!"
Ruth Fielding laughed as she watched the mobile face of her friend.
The latter's cheeks were flushed with excitement, her eyes rolled. She
was all aquiver with the emotion that possessed her.
"Did you see him?" she repeated, as their hands met and Ruth stooped
to press her lips to the full ones of her friend.
"Did I see whom, you funny Henriette?" asked Ruth.
"Am I fon-nay?" demanded Henriette Dupay, in an English which she
evidently struggled to make clear. "Then am I not nice?"
"You are both funny and nice," declared Ruth Fielding, hugging