broken bedroom on the first floor, large enough for three tired
women.

"Any errands, girls?" she called to her two assistants as she mounted to
her seat on the motor ambulance.

"Bring me a man," begged Hilda. "Bring back some one to stir things up."

Indeed, it had been slow for the nurses during the last fortnight. They
were "at the front," but the front was peaceful. After the hot toil of
the autumn attack and counter-attack, there had come a deadlock to the
wearied troops. They were eaten up with the chill of the moist earth,
and the perpetual drizzle. So they laid by their machine guns, and
silently wore through the grey days.

Victor, the orderly, cranked the engine for Mrs. Bracher, and she hummed
merrily away. She drove the car. She was not going to have any fumbling
male hand spoil that sweetly running motor. She had chosen the
battle-front in Flanders as the perfect place for vindicating woman's
courage, coolness, and capacity for roughing it. She was determined to
leave not one quality of initiative and daring to man's monopoly. If he
had worn a decoration for some "nervy" hazardous trait, she came
prepared to pluck it from his swelling pride, cut it in two pieces and
wear her half of it.

Her only delay was a mile in from Pervyse. The engine choked, and the
car grunted to a standstill. She was in front of a deserted farm-house.
She had a half hope that there might be soldiers billeted there. In that
case, she could ask one of them to step out and start up the engine for
her. Cranking a motor is severe on even a sturdy woman. She climbed out
over the dashboard from the wheel side, and entered the door-yard. The
barn had been demolished by shells. The ground around the house was
pitted with shell-holes, a foot deep, three feet deep, one hole six
feet deep. The chimney of the house had collapsed from a well-aimed
obus. Mrs. Bracher knocked at the door, and shook it. But there was no
answer. The house carried that silent horror of a deserted and dangerous
place. It seemed good to her to come away from it, and return to the
motor. She bent her back to the crank, and set the engine chugging. It
was good to travel along to the sight of a human face.

"No one stationed there?" she asked of the next sentinel.

"It is impossible, Madame," he replied; "the enemy have located it
exactly with a couple of their guns. Not one day passes but they throw
their shells around it."

As Mrs. Bracher completed the seven-