“Yes, I have!”
“You have?” cried Tom. “What is it? Tell us, quick!”
“I am going to save my brother by offering myself as a prisoner in his place,” said Nellie with quiet resolve. “That's how I'll save him! I'll exchange myself for him!”
CHAPTER XXIII. THE BIG BATTLE
Nellie Leroy rose from, the chair where she had been sitting, and stood before the little party of her friends, gathered in the little Paris apartment where Bessie Gleason and her mother made their home when they were not actively engaged in Red Cross work. The sister of the captive airman had a quiet but very determined air about her.
“That is what I am going to do,” she said, as no one at first answered what had been a dramatic outbreak. “Perhaps you will tell me best how to go about it,” and she turned to Tom and Jack. “You know something of the German lines, and where I can best go to give myself up.”
“Why—why, you can't go at all!” burst out Tom.
“I can't go?”
“No, of course not. You mean all right, Nellie,” went on the young man, “but it simply can't be done. To give yourself up to the Germans would mean for yourself not only—Oh, it couldn't be done!” as he thought of the cruelty of the Huns, not only to the soldiers of the Allied armies but to helpless women and children. “You couldn't give yourself up to those brutes!' he cried.