Bob told Lucy nothing of his visit to Franz’ cottage, so dissatisfied was he with its result. Instead, he went again the following day to Coblenz to look up Larry, who was off at work somewhere and could not be found. Bob went on to his father’s house in search of Elizabeth. He had determined to tell her a part of the forest mystery and ask her opinion of its importance, so highly did both he and Lucy value the little German woman’s sense and judgment.
“She understands Germans better than we do,” Bob thought, as he reached the door-step, “and she may know what they are thinking and feeling better than our General Staff, with daily reports from every city in the occupied territory.”
But here again he was disappointed, for the door was opened by an orderly who told him that Elizabeth had gone out half an hour before. Bob was surprised, for it was about three in the afternoon, an hour when he had never known Elizabeth to be absent. He went into the house and in his father’s office at the rear found Sergeant Cameron.
At sight of his old friend for a moment he forgot his anxieties and, dropping down into a chair, plunged into talk of days gone by. He had not yet tired of reviewing his prison days—to Bob hardest of all the war’s ordeals—with the old non-com, and the latter could never stop marvelling over how Bob had freed him in the nick of time from German captivity. There was such a bond between the two as neither time nor absence could break.
“And now, sir, it’s over and all’s well again,” remarked the sergeant, a smile of satisfaction on his lean, tanned face as he glanced from the window into the street of the German city.
“I hope so,” said Bob soberly, reminded of his errand. “I wish peace were signed and we were out of here.”
“They talk about revolts in Germany,” admitted Sergeant Cameron. “It was bad, you said, sir, in Berlin? And things look a bit uncertain here. But what’s the odds, after all? Let them fight if they choose. We’ll soon be quit of them.”
Bob saw that his old friend’s composure was too assured to be easily upset. For him the war was over and that ended it. Bob fancied he knew now why Lucy, in her troubled moments, loved to come and talk with Sergeant Cameron.
“Well, good-bye, Cameron, I must be off,” he said, getting up. “I wonder where Elizabeth went. I want to see her.”
“Don’t know, sir. She told me she had an errand and would be gone about an hour. It isn’t often she asks leave, so I thought the General wouldn’t have no objections.”