, a young
Englishman, to drive the ambulance. He asked Hilda to go with them to
Ypres.

"Scotch, English and American, all on one seat," said Hilda with a
smile.

They covered the thirty miles in one hour, and went racing through the
city of Ypres, eastward toward the action. Half way out to the noise of
artillery, their car was stopped by an English officer, handsome,
courteous, but very firm.

"You cannot go out on this road," he said.

"We will be back before you know it," pleaded Hilda. "We will bring back
your wounded. Let me show you."

"Report to me on your way back," he ordered. "My name is Fitzgerald,
Captain Fitzgerald."

They rode on. All down the road, straggled wounded men, three miles of
them limped, they held up a red hand, they carried a shattered arm in a
sling. There was blood on their faces. They walked with bowed head,
tired.

"These are the lucky ones," said Woffington, "they only got scotched."

That was the famous battle of Ypres. Of the dead there were more than
the mothers of a countryside could replace in two generations. But death
is war's best gift. War's other gifts are malicious--fever and plague,
and the maiming of strength, and the fouling of beauty--shapely bodies
tortured to strange forms, eager young faces torn away. Death is choicer
than that, a release from the horror of life trampled like a filthy
weed.

"Mons was a birthday party to this," said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're
expecting too much of us. The whole thing is put on us to do, and it
takes a lot of doing."

Dr. McDonnell and Woffington loaded the car with the severest of the
cases, and returned to the white house of the Officer. He was waiting
for them, grim, attentive.

Hilda flung up the hood:--two Tommies at length on the stretchers on one
side of the car; opposite them, seven Tommies in a row with hand, arm,
foot, leg, shoulder, neck and breast wounds. It was too good a piece of
rescue work to be strangled with Red Tape. The Officer could not
refrain from a smile of approval.

"You may work along this road," he said, "but look out for the other
officers. They will probably stop you. But, remember, my permission
holds good only for to-day. Then you must go back. This isn't according
to regulations. Now, go on to the hospital."

Ten minutes more, and they swung inside the great iron gates of the
Sisters of Mercy. Never had Hilda felt the war so keenly as now. She had
been dealing with it bit by bit. But he