oration for a brave deed might have been more
brilliant than her look which followed him, could she have shut out the
torturing picture of his debasement at the shell hole. A quick prayer
sprang from her soul into space as she whispered fervently: "God keep
his courage stiff!" She had not thought about his body; she did not care
about his body! It was to make a soldier that she prayed.

Bonsecours, having seen the look and movement of her lips, asked gently:

"Do you know him?"

"We grew up in the same town, back home," she answered, still gazing
after Jeb.

"Oh!" he said. It was a gasp of pain, and he stood as though a shell
had burst and stunned him. In his headlong work between guns of opposing
armies, he had never stopped to wonder if there might be someone else in
this Nurse Marian's life; and now, stung by a possible realization of
it, his mind leaped outward to fears and fancied facts--all of which she
might have told him were groundless. Turning toward the dug-out, he said
briefly over his shoulder: "Please see to the children. My own cases are
waiting."

Down into the trench Jeb had run, calling for an officer, and was soon
making his report to the Colonel, who peremptorily asked:

"You can show us these positions?"

"Two of them, sir; the others must occupy the same general line."

Silently, but in the highest spirits, three thousand men went over the
top, deploying in open order to make their drag-net stretch to its
farthest capacity and sweep up the redoubts, whose locations, after all,
were largely a matter of conjecture.

Jeb, fighting hard to hold himself steady, pressed toward the right,
where he thought the first digging party could be found; yet, before he
sighted it, firing broke out to his left, then farther to his left--each
time with the unmistakable fusillade of machine-guns answered by
cracking rifles. One bunch at a time, the enemy was being flushed from
cover; yet at each new outburst he gasped more and more for
air,--feeling in his soul what was coming over him, and swearing roundly
to drive it back.

"We ain't going to miss anything, are we?" a cheery voice at his back
called out.

"We'll find it, all right," he panted; but might have saved his breath,
for that very instant they were met by a fire which, in a light less
deceptive, would have been gruelling even to their openly deployed
skirmish line.

Without awaiting commands--were there any to wait for--the men, ducking
low,