“Quite so, Mam’zelle,” and the man handed it to her with a polite gesture.
Ruth seized it, and, with only half-muttered thanks, ran back to her ward. Her heart beat so for a minute that she felt stifled. She could not imagine what the note could be, or what it was about.
Yet she had that intuitive feeling of disaster that portends great and overwhelming events. Her thought was of Tom—Tom Cameron! Who else would send her a letter from the direction of the battle line?
She sank into her chair by the shaded lamp behind the nurse’s screen. For a time she could not even look at the letter again, with its stain of blood so plain upon it!
Then she brought it into line with her vision and with the lamplight streaming upon it. The bloody finger marks half effaced something that was written upon the face of the envelope in a handwriting strange to Ruth.
“This was found in tunic pocket of an American—badly wounded—evacuated to L——. His identification tag lost, as his arm was torn off at elbow, and no tag around his neck.”
This brief statement was unsigned. Some kindly Red Cross worker, perhaps, had written it. Charlie Bragg must have known that the letter was addressed to Ruth and offered to bring it to her at Clair, the American on whom the letter was found having been unconscious.
The flap on the envelope had not been sealed. With trembling fingers the girl drew the paper forth. Yes! It was in Tom Cameron’s handwriting, and it began: “Dear Ruth Fielding.”
In his usual jovial style the letter proceeded. It had evidently been written just before Tom had been called to active duty in the trenches.
There were no American troops in the battle line, as yet, Ruth well knew. But their officers, in small squads, were being sent forward to learn what it meant to be in the trenches under fire.