“Old Bessie,” Ruth judged, must be the hard-featured woman she had seen at the chateau gate and, on this particular morning, talking to the lame man at the wayside cross.
The American girl waited now in some trepidation for Dupay to speak. He seemed to consider the question of Ruth’s getting to Lyse quite seriously for some time; then he said quietly that he saw no objection to Henriette taking the sacks of grain to M. Naubeck in the touring car body instead of the truck, and going to-day to Lyse on that errand instead of the next week.
It was settled so easily. Henriette ran away to dress, while a younger brother slipped out to see that the car was in order for the two girls. Ruth knew she could not offer the Dupays any remuneration for the trouble they took for her, but she was so thankful to them that she was almost in tears when she and Henriette started for Lyse half an hour later.
“The main road is so cut up and rutted by the big lorries and ambulances that we would better go another way,” Henriette said, as she steered out of the farm lane into the wider road.
They turned away from Lyse, it seemed to Ruth; but, after circling around the hill on which the chateau stood, they entered a more traveled way, but one not so deeply rutted.
A mile beyond this point, and just as the motor-car came down a gentle slope to a small stream, crossed by a rustic bridge, the two girls spied another automobile, likewise headed toward Lyse. It was stalled, both wheels on the one side being deep in a muddy rut.
There were two men with the car—a small man and a much taller individual, who was dressed in the uniform of a French officer—a captain, as Ruth saw when they came nearer.
The little man stepped into the woods, perhaps for a sapling, with which to pry up the car, before the girls reached the bottom of the hill. At least, they only saw his back. But when Ruth gained a clear view of the officer’s face she was quite shocked.
“What is the matter?” Henriette asked her, driving carefully past the stalled car.
Ruth remained silent until they were across the bridge and the French girl had asked her question a second time, saying: