Ruth Fielding at the War Front | Page 3

the
girl's plump body close to her own, as they walked on slowly to the
chateau gate. "Tell me. Who was I supposed to see? A motor full of
officers passed me, and an aeroplane over my head----"
"Oh, non! non!" cried Henriette. Then, in awe: "Major Marchand."
"Oh! Is that Major Marchand?"
"But yes, Mademoiselle Ruth. Ah-h! Such a man--such a figure! He is
Madame the Countess' younger son."
"So I understand," Ruth said. "He is safely engaged in Paris, is he not?"
and her tone implied much.
"Ye-es. So it is said. He--he must be a ve-ry important man,
Mademoiselle, or his duty would not keep him there."
"Unless the Boches succeed in raiding Paris from the air he is not likely
to get hurt at all--this Major Marchand?"
"Oh!" pouted Henriette. "You are so critical. But he is--what you
say?--so-o beautiful!"
"Not in my eyes," said Ruth grimly. "I don't like dolly soldiers."

"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth!" murmured the French girl. "Do not let
Madame the Countess suspect your feelings toward her younger son.
He is all she has now, you know."
"Indeed? Has the older son fallen in battle?"
"The young count has disappeared," whispered Henriette, her lips close
to Ruth's ear. "We heard of it only lately. But it seems he disappeared
some months ago. Nobody knows what has become of him."
"He, at least, was on the battle front?" asked the American girl. "He is
missing? Probably a prisoner of the Germans?"
"No-o. He was not at the front," confessed the other girl. "He, too, was
engaged in Paris, it is understood. But hush! We are at the gate. I will
ring. Don't, Mademoiselle Ruth, let the dear countess suspect that you
do not highly approve of her remaining son."
The Red Cross girl smiled rather grimly, but she gave the promise.
CHAPTER II
AT THE CHATEAU
The two girls, arm in arm, approached the postern gate beside the wide
iron grille that was never opened save for the passage of horses or a
motor car. There was a little round shutter in the postern at the height
of a man's head; for aforetime the main gateway had been of massive
oak, bolt-studded and impervious to anything less than cannon shot.
The wall of masonry that surrounded the chateau was both high and
thick, built four hundred years or so before for defence.
An old-fashioned rope-pull hung beside the postern. Henriette dragged
on this sharply, but the girls could not hear the tongue of the bell, for it
struck far back in the so-called offices of the chateau, where the serving
people had had their quarters before these war times had come upon the
earth.

Now there were but few servants remaining at the chateau. For the most
part the elderly Countess Marchand lived alone and used but few of the
rooms.
As the girls waited an answer to their summons, Henriette said, in
reference to what had already passed in conversation between them:
"It hurts me, dear friend, that anybody should doubt the loyalty of our
countess whom we know to be so good. Why! there are people even
wicked enough to connect her with that--that awful Thing we know of,"
and the girl dropped her voice and looked suddenly around her, as
though she feared an unseen presence.
"As though she were a werwolf," she added, with a shudder.
"Pooh!" and Ruth Fielding laughed. "Nobody in their senses would
connect Madame la Countess with such tales, having once seen her."
She thought now, as they waited, of her first visit to the chateau, and of
the appearance of the Countess Marchand in her bare library. Whatever
her sons might be--the young count who was missing, or this major
whom she had just met in the grassy lane--Ruth Fielding was confident
that the lady of the chateau was a loyal subject of France, and that she
was trusted by the Government.
Ruth had called here herself on that occasion with a secret agent,
Monsieur Lafrane, to clear up the mystery of a trio of criminals who
had come from America to prey upon the Red Cross. These crooks had
succeeded in robbing the Supply Department of the Red Cross, in
which Ruth herself was engaged. But in the end they had fallen into the
toils of the French secret service and Ruth had aided in their overthrow.
All this is told in the volume of this series immediately preceding our
present story, entitled: "Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; or, Doing Her
Best for Uncle Sam." This was the thirteenth volume of the Ruth
Fielding Series.
Of the twelve books that have gone before that only a brief mention can

be made while Ruth and the young French girl are waiting for an
answer to the bell.