“It only came an hour or two ago,” her father explained. “If he wrote to you by the same post, you may have left before it arrived.” He moved so that he was between her and the other room, his back to the open doors. “You think I ought to?” he said.!

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “But I tried the wrong way.” “The right way might be found,” he added, “by the right man, and woman.” “Carleton will want him to make his food policy include Tariff Reform,” he said. “If he prove pliable, and is willing to throw over his free trade principles, all well and good.”

The firelight showed to Joan a comically frightened face, with round, staring eyes and an open mouth. How long Joan remained there she was never quite sure. There was little difference between day and night. After it had been quiet for an hour or so, Madame Lelanne would go out, to return a little later with a wounded man upon her back; and when one died, she would throw him across her shoulder and disappear again up the steps. Sometimes it was a Frenchman and sometimes a German she brought in. One gathered that the fight for the village still continued. There was but little they could do for them beyond dressing their wounds and easing their pain. Joan and the little chemist took it in turns to relieve one another. If Madame Lelanne ever slept, it was when she would sit in the shadow behind the stove, her hands upon her knees. Dubos had been in the house when it had fallen. Madame Lelanne had discovered him pinned against a wall underneath a great oak beam that had withstood the falling débris. His beard had been burnt off, but otherwise he had been unharmed. “And you would have had all the trouble of cooking it,” answered the girl. “That only wants warming up.”