box to-night?" asked Hilda.

"Draughty," said the Commandant, with a shiver; "it rocks in the wind."

"You must have some rag-time," prescribed Hilda, and seated herself at
the piano.

It was Pervyse's only piano, untouched by shell and shrapnel, and
nightly it sounded the praise of things. The little group drew close
about the American girl, as she led them in a "coon song."

"I say," said Hilda, looking up from the keys, "would any one believe
it?"

"Believe what?" asked Mrs. Bracher.

"The lot of us here, exchanging favorites, with war just outside our
window. I tell you," repeated Hilda, "no one would believe it."

"They don't have to," retorted Mrs. Bracher, sharply. She had grown
weary of telling folks at home how matters stood, and then having them
say, "Fancy now, really?"

The methodical guns had pounded the humanity out of Pervyse, and, with
the living, had gone music and art. There was nowhere in the wasted area
for the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a
dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind--to wait, to watch for
some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill--war is
drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more
dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the
dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright
faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had
stood high in the niches of the church, had fallen forward on their
faces. All the little devices of beauty, cherished by the villagers, had
been shattered.

One perfect piano had been left unmarred by all the destruction that had
robbed the place of its instruments of pleasure. With elation and
laughter the soldiers had discovered it, when the early fierceness of
the attack had ebbed. Straightway they carried it to the home of the
women.

When the Commandant first saw it, soon after its arrival in their
living-room, he beamed all over.

"The Broadwood," he said. "How that brings back the memories! When I
was a young man once in Ostend, I was one of eight to play with
Paderewski, that great musician. Yes, together we played through an
afternoon. And the instrument on which I played was a Broadwood. I
cannot now ever see it, without remembering that day in the Kursaal, and
how he led us with that fingering, that vigor. Do you know how he lifts
his hand high over the keys and then drops suddenly upon them?"

"Yes