mall railroad station, connecting with the
main road leading into Petrograd.

Word of the approach of the ambulances must have been sent ahead, for a
train of more than a dozen coaches was even now in waiting.

As quickly as possible Nona and Barbara crawled out of their wagon,
stamping their feet on the frozen ground and waving their arms in order
to start their circulation. Then they began to assist in transferring
the wounded soldiers from the wagons to the cars. The men were
wonderfully patient and plucky, for they must have suffered tortures.
They had first to be lifted on to an ambulance cot and then transferred
to another cot inside the train. A few of the soldiers fainted and for
them Nona and Barbara were relieved. At least they were spared the added
pain.

Yet by and by, when the long line of cars started for Petrograd, the
occupants of the coaches were amazingly cheerful. Tea and bread had been
served all of the travelers and cigarettes given to the men.

Some of the soldiers sang, others told jokes, those who were most
dangerously ill only lay still and smiled. They were on their way to
Petrograd! This meant home and friends to some of them. To others it
meant only the name of their greatest city and the palace of their Czar.
But to all of them Petrograd promised comfort and quiet, away from the
horrible, deafening noises of exploding bullets and shells.

Naturally Nona and Barbara were affected by the greater cheerfulness
about them.

"If only Mildred were with us, how relieved I would be. Really, I don't
know how we are to bear the suspense of not knowing what has become of
her," Barbara said not once, but a dozen times in the course of the day.

But night brought them into the famous Russian capital.

CHAPTER XII

_Petrograd_

On their arrival Barbara and Nona went with the wounded soldiers to a
Red Cross hospital in Petrograd.

There, to her consternation, a few days later Nona Davis became ill. The
illness was only an attack of malarial fever, which Nona had been
subject to ever since her childhood; nevertheless, the disease had never
chosen a more unpropitious time for its reappearance.

For a few days she seemed dangerously ill, then her convalescence left
her weak and exhausted. She was totally unfit for work and only a burden
instead of an aid to the hospital staff.

Poor Barbara had a busy, unhappy time of it. She did her best to look
after Nona in spare moments from her reg