htened up and a smile
spread over his disfigured features.

"I confidently believe, Miss Stanton, we have turned the trick! Luck,
let us call it, for no sensible surgeon would have attempted the thing.
Rest assured that Andrew Denton will live for the next ten days. More
than that, with no serious set-back he may fully recover and live for
many years to come."

He was so pleased that tears stood in his one good eye and he wiped them
away sheepishly. The girl took his hand and pressed it in both her own.

"You are wonderful--wonderful!" she said.

"Don't, please--don't look in my face," he pleaded.

"I won't," she returned, dropping her eyes; "I will think only of the
clever brain, the skillful hand and the stout heart."

"Not even that," he said. "Think of the girl wife--of Elizabeth. It was
she who steadied my hand to-day. Indeed, Miss Stanton, it was
Elizabeth's influence that saved him. But for her we would have let him
die."

CHAPTER XVI

CLARETTE

So it was toward evening of the fourth day that the launch finally
sighted the ship _Arabella_. Delays and difficulties had been
encountered in spite of government credentials and _laissez-passer_ and
Patsy had begun to fear they would not reach the harbor of Dunkirk
before dark.

All through the journey the Belgian woman and her children had sat
sullenly in the bow, the youngsters kept from mischief by the stern eye
of Henderson. In the stern seats, however, the original frigid silence
had been thawed by Patsy Doyle's bright chatter. She began by telling
the countess and Elizabeth all about herself and Beth and Maud and Uncle
John, relating how they had come to embark upon this unusual mission of
nursing the wounded of a foreign war, and how they had secured the
services of the clever but disfigured surgeon, Dr. Gys. She gave the
ladies a clear picture of the hospital ship and told how the girls had
made their dash to the firing line during the battle of Nieuport and
brought back an ambulance full of wounded--including Andrew Denton.

Patsy did not answer very fully Elizabeth Denton's eager questions
concerning the nature of her husband's injuries, but she tried to
prepare the poor young wife for the knowledge that the wound would prove
fatal. This was a most delicate and difficult thing to do and Patsy
blundered and floundered until her very ambiguity aroused alarm.

"Tell me the worst!" begged Elizabeth Denton, her face pale and tensely
drawn.