There was still a crowd about me, the same throng that had hastened with me from the station to this place of sure consolation. We entered silently, and never had the cool calm beauty of that glorious building so impressed me.

Above our bowed heads the light, filtering through a thousand panes of gorgeously colored glass, streamed like a radiance. High under the vaulted ceiling the blue of Heaven itself seemed to have found a resting place, and on every hand the untroubled eyes of graven saints seemed to look down in sympathy, easing our agony.

Before me, on the distant altar, the twinkling candles shone like stars of hope, and soon the air was filled with gentle music coming from afar. The choir sang, and I, too, lifted my voice to swell the prayer:.

"Sauvez, sauvez la France!

Ne l'abandonnez pas!" "Save, save France; do not abandon her!"

It was the "Canticle of the Abandoned Heart," written in the pain and stress of 1870.

Slowly my spirit found itself. In the peace of that stately building, under the mysterious spell of its holy beauty, my troubled soul was soothed. The aching burden was lifted; again came courage.

"Sauvez, sauvez la France!
Ne l'abandonnez pas!"

I repeated the words, and in them found my solace. It was not of myself that I must think, but of my country. I bowed my head anew, and prayed with all my strength that I, too, might play a worthy part in helping to save France.

CHAPTER IV

GATHERING CLOUDS

AFTER a day or two of confusion, the life of the city went on much as it had before; except that we were all busier than we ever had been. Heloise and I were set to rolling bandages and prepar

ing surgical dressings with Madame Barton, who found useful employment even for little Jacques. At spare moments we knitted, for the Abbé Chinot, of the cathedral, had preached to us of the needs of the soldiers. The hours sped fast, and from dawn till late at night we labored with a good will to do our part behind the lines.

In the early days of August, we were gladdened by the news that our armies were in Lorraine and old Eugénie was in an ecstasy of delight.

"We shall be back again at Courcelles!" she cried a dozen times a day; "back again in the old château! We shall be de Martignys once more and of some importance in the world!"

To her and to Grandpère this prospect meant much. When my papa was a baby, our family had been driven out of Alsace and the estates at Courcelles, where the Martignys had lived for many generations. Eugénie had been born on the land, and had served the family since the days of her girlhood, so it was more her home than it was mine. It was natural that she should long to return to it.

"Or what the sales Boches have left of it!" she would say venomously.

Hearing constantly of our family home had given me a great desire to live in the old château, where all the Martignys but me had been born. But against anticipating the fulfilment of this hope, Father had been at pains to warn me. He loved me doubly, for my own sake and because of that dear maman who had died when I was a baby, and he spoke to me of all he was interested in as if I had been grown up. To add to this intimacy, he had taught me English, in which he was proficient, and as I grew older we talked together in that language for practice. So I came to understand his point of view in regard to Courcelles. He had always insisted that, so far as France was concerned, we should never go to war to win back Alsace-Lorraine; and heretofore the possibility of our returning thither had been like a lovely dream which I never expected to come true.

Grandpère had been banished from Alsace by the Germans, because he had fought so well against them; but, as a result of a wound on the head, the orderly development of his mind had ceased, so that he lived wholly in the past, with, so far as we could judge, no appreciation of what had taken place in the world since that time.

Yet he recalled the earlier period constantly, repeating again and again stories. of the war, events in the history of the château, description of the domain, and a thousand and one anecdotes of our ancestors. All were to me more interesting than any book I had ever read; but of these tales one, in particular, came close to my heart.

It concerned a distant kinsman named Jean, a knight of Metz. He it was who, with one other, escorted Jeanne d'Arc from Vaucouleurs to Chinon, where she saw the dauphin. Save only the peasSave only the peasants, this knight of Metz was the very first to have faith in the Maid, and always since that day there has been a girl in our family named after her. In this generation I am that girl, and to me has been intrusted a holy relic bequeathed by Jean of Metz. It is a little sandal of soft leather, which, so says the parchment relating to it, Jeanne d'Arc had worn when she came to Vaucouleurs from Domrémy. The Martignys had guarded it through generation after generation since the fifteenth century. And I kept it, carefully wrapped in silk and hidden away in a box of scented wood. To me the little sandal was very precious and sacred.

Now that the French soldiers were fighting in Lorraine the prospect of a return to our old estates became a possibility. But, very soon, the glad faces we had been meeting in the streets disappeared. The newspapers, to be sure, gave no hint of reverses, but reports of disaster reached our ears, from unknown sources.

It was Madame Garnier who brought us all the latest tidings.

"The Crown Prince of Germany is in Lorraine!" she declared one afternoon. "They have taken Longwy!"

"How do you know?" Madame Barton demanded.

"All the world says so," was the reply. "It must be true. We are being beaten !" And, nigh weeping, she left us.

The next morning she came with a story of how the French had taken Metz, and was then as gay as she had been miserable before. But in neither case did we give much heed to her gossip.

Nevertheless there was a growing dread in our hearts that all was not well with our armies, and this was strengthened when we heard that Paris was preparing for a siege. That report shocked us like a blow. If Paris was expecting an attack, what of Rheims, miles nearer the advancing enemy? Never, in our most discouraged moments, had we admitted the possibility that our city was in danger.

In the first days of September the French capital was moved to Bordeaux, and on the morning we learned of it Madame Garnier brought further threatening tidings.

"We are lost!" she exclaimed. "The Boches are at Laon!"

"Impossible!" cried Madame Barton.. "Laon is only forty kilometres away!"

"They are there," Madame Garnier insisted. "There is no doubt of it. Everybody is saying so. Rheims will be taken. We are lost, and what will become of Mimi?" It was of her poodle she was thinking. thinking. Her words silenced us, and Madame Barton's face grew white as she looked from Heloise to Jacques.

"I must make certain of this," she declared, rising and hastening away.

"Madame Barton will find it all too true," Madame Garnier repeated. "We are lost. Oh, ma pauvre petite Mimi!" And she, too, left us, with a look of despair.

Heloise and I rolled bandages in silence, but in a little while Madame Barton returned, and when we heard the door close we ran out into the hall.

"It is all true!" she said. "The Germans are at Laon! I am advised to flee from the city at once. Hundreds are already starting. For the sake of Heloise and Jacques, I, too, must go. You must come with us, Jeannette."

know I am a weak girl; but the men of France are dying to hold back the Boches. My Papa is fighting, too, and he left our home in my charge. I cannot desert Grandpère and Eugénie, nor will I run from the Germans."

She looked earnestly at me for a moment and saw that I had made up my mind; then she came swiftly to my side and took me in her arms.

"I cannot say you are wrong, Jeannette," she said brokenly. "If I thought only of myself, certainly I would stay; but there are Heloise and little Jacques to be considered. I must go."

I

ter has in it the quality of hope. shall wait till to-morrow before I leave." I closed the door after they had gone, and turned to meet Eugénie. On her face. was an expression that startled me.

"What is it, Eugénie?" I asked.

"Listen!" she half-whispered at my side. At first no unusual sound caught my ear; then, very distant, I heard a lowtoned rumbling.

"Is it a thunder-storm?" I asked.

"No," she muttered, "it is not a thunder-storm. It is a sound I have not heard for more than forty years."

"Tell me what it is," I demanded, though I had already guessed the answer. "It is the German guns! Listen!"