in his heart. He knew he was going
into danger--that he was already in peril. Bullets whistled
through the smoke as he advanced towards the firing-line, where,
in the fog, dim figures were outlined here and there. He passed
an officer, standing with bared sword, watching his men digging
up the sod and piling it into low breastworks. He went on,
passing others, sometimes two soldiers bearing a wounded man, now
and then a maimed creature writhing on the grass or hobbling away
to the rear. The battle-line lay close to him now--long open
ranks of men, flat on their stomachs, firing into the smoke
across the river-bank. Their officers loomed up in the gloom,
some leaning quietly back on their sword-hilts, some pacing to
and fro, smoking, or watchfully steadying the wearied men.

Almost at once he saw Alixe. She was standing beside a tall
wounded officer, giving him something to drink from a tin cup.

"Alixe," said Jack, "this is not your place."

She looked at him tranquilly as the wounded man was led away by a
soldier of the hospital corps.

"It is my place."

"No," he said, violently, "you are trying to find death here!"

"I seek nothing," she said, in a gentle, tired voice; "let me
go."

"Come back. Alixe--your brother is alive."

She looked at him impassively.

"My brother?"

"Yes."

"I have no brother."

He understood and chafed inwardly.

"Come, Alixe," he urged; "for Heaven's sake, try to live and
forget--"

"I have nothing to forget--everything to remember. Let me pass."
She touched the blood-stained cross on her breast. "Do you not
see? That was white once. So was my soul."

"It is now," he said, gently. "Come back."

A wounded man somewhere in the smoke called, "Water! water! In
the name of God!--my sister--"

"I am coming!" called Alixe, clearly.

"To me first! Hasten, my sister!" groaned another.

"Patience, children--I come!" called Alixe.

With a gesture she passed Jack; a flurry of smoke hid her. The
pungent powder-fog made his eyes dim; his ears seemed to split
with the terrific volley firing.

He turned away and went back across the lawn, only to stop at the
well in the garden, fill two buckets, and plod back to the
firing-line again. He found plenty to do there; he helped Alixe,
following her with his buckets where she passed among the
wounded, the stained cross on her breast. Once a bullet struck a
pail full of water, and he held his finger in the hole until the
water was a