-books.

One morning the Doctor entered the cellar, with a troubled look on his
face.

"I am forced to ask you to do something," began he, "and yet I hardly
have the heart to tell you."

"What can the man be after," queried Hilda, "will you be wanting to
borrow my hair brush to curry the cavalry with?"

"Worse than that," responded he; "I must ask you to cut off your
beautiful hair."

"My hair," gasped Hilda, darting her hand to her head, and giving the
locks an unconscious pat.

"Your hair," replied the Doctor. "It breaks my heart to make you do it,
but there's so much disease floating around in the air these days, that
it is too great a risk for you to live with sick men day and night and
carry all that to gather germs."

"I see," said Hilda in a subdued tone.

"One thing I will ask, that you give me a lock of it," he added quietly.
She thought he was jesting with his request.

That afternoon she went to her cellar, and took the faithful shears
which had severed so many bandages, and put them pitilessly at work on
her crown of beauty. The hair fell to the ground in rich strands, darker
by a little, and softer far, than the straw on which it rested. Then she
gathered it up into one of the aged illustrated papers that had drifted
out to the post from kind friends in Furnes. She wrapped it tightly
inside the double page picture of laughing soldiers, celebrating
Christmas in the trenches. And she carried it outside behind the black
stump of a house which they called their home, and threw it on the cans
that had once contained bully-beef. She was a little heart-sick at her
loss, but she had no vanity. As she was stepping inside, the Doctor came
down the road.

He stopped at sight of her.

"Oh, I am sorry," he said.

"I don't care," she answered, and braved it off by a little flaunt of
her head, though there was a film over her eyes.

"And did you keep a lock for me?" he asked.

"You are joking," she replied.

"I was never more serious," he returned. She shook her head, and went
down into the cellar. The Doctor walked around to the rear of the house.

A few minutes later, he entered the cellar.

"Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm going up the line to
Nieuport. I'll be back in the morning." He turned to climb the steps,
and then paused a moment.

"Beautiful hair brings good luck," he said.

"Then my luck's gone," returned Hilda.

"But mine hasn't," he answered.

* *