A THIRD rifle-shot rang through the night air, close to thecottage. Grace started and approached the window in alarm.

"What does that firing mean?" she asked.

"Signals from the outposts," the nurse quietly replied.

"Is there any danger? Have the Germans come back?"

Surgeon Surville answered the question. He lifted the canvasscreen, and looked into the room as Miss Roseberry spoke.

"The Germans are advancing on us," he said. "Their vanguard is insight."

Grace sank on the chair near her, trembling from head to foot.Mercy advanced to the surgeon, and put the decisive question tohim.

"Do we defend the position?" she inquired.

Surgeon Surville ominously shook his head.

"Impossible! We are outnumbered as usual--ten to one."

The shrill roll of the French drums was heard outside.

"There is the retreat sounded!" said the surgeon. "The captain isnot a man to think twice about what he does. We are left to takecare of ourselves. In five minutes we must be out of this place."

A volley of rifle-shots rang out as he spoke. The German vanguardwas attacking the French at the outposts. Grace caught thesurgeon entreatingly by the arm. "Take me with you," she cried."Oh, sir, I have suffered from the Germans already! Don't forsakeme, if they come back!" The surgeon was equal to the occasion; heplaced the hand of the pretty Englishwoman on his breast. "Fearnothing, madam," he said, looking as if he could have annihilatedthe whole German force with his own invincible arm. "AFrenchman's heart beats under your hand. A Frenchman's devotionprotects you." Grace's head sank on his shoulder. MonsieurSurville felt that he had asserted himself; he looked roundinvitingly at Mercy. She, too, was an attractive woman. TheFrenchman had another shoulder at _her_ service. Unhappily theroom was dark--the look was lost on Mercy. She was thinking ofthe helpless men in the inner chamber, and she quietly recalledthe surgeon to a sense of his professional duties.

"What is to become of the sick and wounded?" she asked.

Monsieur Surville shrugged one shoulder--the shoulder that wasfree.

"The strongest among them we can take away with us," he said."The others must be left here. Fear nothing for yourself, dearlady. There will be a place for you in the baggage-wagon."

"And for me, too?" Grace pleaded, eagerly.

The surgeon's invincible arm stole round the young lady's waist,and answered mutely with a squeeze.

"Take her with you," said Mercy. "My place is with the men whomyou leave behind."

Grace listened in amazement. "Think what you risk," she said "ifyou stop here."

Mercy pointed to her left shoulder.

"Don't alarm yourself on my account," she answered; "the redcross will protect me."

Another roll of the drum warned the susceptible surgeon to takehis place as director-general of the ambulance without anyfurther delay. He conducted Grace to a chair, and placed both herhands on his heart this time, to reconcile her to the misfortuneof his absence. "Wait here till I return for you," he whispered."Fear nothing, my charming friend. Say to yourself, 'Surville isthe soul of honor! Surville is devoted to me!'" He struck hisbreast; he again forgot the obscurity in the room, and cast onelook of unutterable homage at his charming friend. "A _bientot!_"he cried, and kissed his hand and disappeared.

As the canvas screen fell over him the sharp report of therifle-firing was suddenly and grandly dominated by the roar ofcannon. The instant after a shell exploded in the garden outside,within a few yards of the window.

Grace sank on her knees with a shriek of terror. Mercy, withoutlosing her self-possession, advanced to the window and lookedout.

"The moon has risen," she said. "The Germans are shelling thevillage."

Grace rose, and ran to her for protection.

"Take me away!" she cried. "We shall be killed if we stay here."She stopped, looking in astonishment at the tall black figure ofthe nurse, standing immovably by the window. "Are you made ofiron?" she exclaimed. "Will nothing frighten you?"

Mercy smiled sadly. "Why should I be afraid of losing my life?"she answered. "I have nothing worth living for!"

The roar of the cannon shook the cottage for the second time. Asecond shell exploded in the courtyard, on the opposite side ofthe building.

Bewildered by the noise, panic-stricken as the danger from theshells threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threwher arms round the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity ofterror, to the woman whose hand she had shrunk from touching notfive minutes since. "Where is it safest?" she cried. "Where can Ihide myself?"

"How can I tell where the next shell will fall?" Mercy answered,quietly.

The steady composure of the one woman seemed to madden the other.Releasing the nurse, Grace looked wildly round for a way ofescape from the cottage. Making first for the kitchen, she wasdriven back by the clamor and confusion attending the removal ofthose among the wounded who were strong enough to be placed inthe wagon. A second look round showed her the door leading intothe yard. She rushed to it with a cry of relief. She had justlaid her hand on the lock when the third report of cannon burstover the place.

Starting back a step, Grace lifted her hands mechanically to herears. At the same moment the third shell burst through the roofof the cottage, and exploded in the room, just inside the door.Mercy sprang forward, unhurt, from her place at the window. Theburning fragments of the shell were already firing the dry woodenfloor, and in the midst of them, dimly seen through the smoke,lay the insensible body of her companion in the room. Even atthat dreadful moment the nurse's presence of mind did not failher. Hurrying back to the place that she had just left, nearwhich she had already noticed the miller's empty sacks lying in aheap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on thesmoldering floor, trampled out the fire. That done, she knelt bythe senseless woman, and lifted her head.

Was she wounded? or dead?

Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on thewrist. While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beatingof the pulse, Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurriedin to inquire if any harm had been done.

Mercy called to him to approach. "I am afraid the shell hasstruck her," she said, yielding her place to him. "See if she isbadly hurt."

The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itselfbriefly in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of theletters in it--the letter R. "Take off her cloak," he cried,raising his hand to her neck. "Poor angel! She has turned infalling; the string is twisted round her throat."

Mercy removed the cloak. It dropped on the floor as the surgeonlifted Grace in his arms. "Get a candle," he said, impatiently;"they will give you one in the kitchen." He tried to feel thepulse: his hand trembled, the noise and confusion in the kitchenbewildered him. "Just Heaven!" he exclaimed. "My emotionsoverpower me!" Mercy approached him with the candle. The lightdisclosed the frightful injury which a fragment of the shell hadinflicted on the Englishwoman's head. Surgeon Surville's manneraltered on the instant. The expression of anxiety left his face;its professional composure covered it suddenly like a mask. Whatwas the object of his admiration now? An inert burden in hisarms--nothing more.

The change in his face was not lost on Mercy. Her large gray eyeswatched him attentively. "Is the lady seriously wounded?" sheasked.

"Don't trouble yourself to hold the light any longer," was thecool reply. "It's all over--I can do nothing for her."

"Dead?"

Surgeon Surville nodded and shook his fist in the direction ofthe outposts. "Accursed Germans!" he cried, and looked down atthe dead face on his arm, and shrugged his shoulders resignedly."The fortune of war!" he said as he lifted the body and placed iton the bed in one corner of the room. "Next time, nurse, it maybe you or me. Who knows? Bah! the problem of human destinydisgusts me." He turned from the bed, and illustrated his disgustby spitting on the fragments of the exploded shell. "We mustleave her there," he resumed. "She was once a charmingperson--she is nothing now. Come away, Miss Mercy, before it istoo late."

He offered his arm to the nurse; the creaking of thebaggage-wagon, starting on its journey, was heard outside, andthe shrill roll of the drums was renewed in the distance. Theretreat had begun.

Mercy drew aside the canvas, and saw the badly wounded men, lefthelpless at the mercy of the enemy, on their straw beds. Sherefused the offer of Monsieur Surville's arm.

"I have already told you that I shall stay here," she answered.

Monsieur Surville lifted his hands in polite remonstrance. Mercyheld back the curtain, and pointed to the cottage door.

"Go," she said. "My mind is made up."

Even at that final moment the Frenchman asserted himself. He madehis exit with unimpaired grace and dignity. "Madam," he said,"you are sublime!" With that parting compliment the man ofgallantry--true to the last to his admiration of the sex--bowed,with his hand on his heart, and left the cottage.

Mercy dropped the canvas over the doorway. She was alone with thedead woman.

The last tramp of footsteps, the last rumbling of the wagonwheels, died away in the distance. No renewal of firing from theposition occupied by the enemy disturbed the silence thatfollowed. The Germans knew that the French were in retreat. A fewminutes more and they would take possession of the abandonedvillage: the tumult of their approach should become audible atthe cottage. In the meantime the stillness was terrible. Even thewounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited their fatein silence.

Alone in the room, Mercy's first look was directed to the bed.

The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish atthe close of twilight. Separated, on their arrival at thecottage, by the duties required of the nurse, they had only metagain in the captain's room. The acquaintance between them hadbeen a short one; and it had given no promise of ripening intofriendship. But the fatal accident had roused Mercy's interest inthe stranger. She took the candle, and approached the corpse ofthe woman who had been literally killed at her side.

She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night atthe stillness of the dead face.

It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to beforgotten afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad;the eyes unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkablysmall. With tender hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair andarranged the crumpled dress. "Not five minutes since," shethought to herself, "I was longing to change places with _you!_"She turned from the bed with a sigh. "I wish I could changeplaces now!"

The silence began to oppress her. She walked slowly to the otherend of the room.

The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to MissRoseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it. She pickedit up and brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair.This done, she put the light back on the table, and going to thewindow, listened for the first sounds of the German advance. Thefaint passage of the wind through some trees near at hand was theonly sound that caught her ears. She turned from the window, andseated herself at the table, thinking. Was there any duty stillleft undone that Christian charity owed to the dead? Was thereany further service that pressed for performance in the intervalbefore the Germans appeared?

Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill-fated companion and herself . Miss Roseberry had spoken of herobject in returning to England. She had mentioned a lady--aconnection by marriage, to whom she was personally astranger--who was waiting to receive her. Some one capable ofstating how the poor creature had met with her death ought towrite to her only friend. Who was to do it? There was nobody todo it but the one witness of the catastrophe now left in thecottage--Mercy herself.

She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it,and took from the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace hadshown to her. The only way of discovering the address to write toin England was to open the case and examine the papers inside.Mercy opened the case--and stopped, feeling a strange reluctanceto carry the investigation any farther.

A moment's consideration satisfied her that her scruples weremisplaced. If she respected the case as inviolable, the Germanswould certainly not hesitate to examine it, and the Germans wouldhardly trouble themselves to write to England. Which were thefittest eyes to inspect the papers of the deceased lady--the eyesof men and foreigners, or the eyes of her own countrywoman?Mercy's hesitation left her. She emptied the contents of the caseon the table.

That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.