“Oh, there must be!” gasped Ruth, wringing her hands. “Surely there is a mistake. There is no other hospital here for him to be brought to, and I am sure this person was brought to Lyse. They say his arm is torn off at the elbow.”
A nurse passing through the office stopped and inquired in French of whom Ruth was speaking. The girl of the Red Mill explained.
“I believe we have the blessé in my ward,” this nurse said kindly. “Will you come and see, Mademoiselle? He has been quite out of his head, and perhaps he is an American, for he has not spoken French. We thought him English.”
“Oh, let me see him!” cried Ruth, and hastened with her into one of the wards where she knew the most serious cases were cared for.
Her fears almost overcame the girl. Her interest in Tom Cameron was deep and abiding. For years they had been friends, and now, of late, a stronger feeling than friendship had developed in her heart for Tom.
His courage, his cheerfulness, the real, solid worth of the young fellow, could not fail to endear him to one who knew him as well as did Ruth Fielding. If he had been shot down, mangled, injured, perhaps, to the very death!
How would Helen and their father feel if Tom was seriously wounded? If Ruth found him here in the hospital, should she immediately communicate with his twin sister in Paris, and with his father, who had doubtless reached the States by this time?
Her mind thus in a turmoil, she followed the nurse into the ward and down the aisle between the rows of cots. She had helped comfort the wounded in this very ward when she worked in this hospital; but she looked now for no familiar face, save one. She looked ahead for the white, strained countenance of Tom Cameron against the coarse pillow-slip.
The nurse stopped beside a cot. Oh, the relief! There was no screen around it! The occupant was turned with his face away from the aisle. The stump of the uplifted arm on his left side, bandaged and padded, was uppermost.
“Tom!” breathed the girl of the Red Mill, holding back just a little and with a hand upon her breast.