"Oh, then the poor man died in spite of your efforts to rescue him!" said Martha in crestfallen tones.
"He didn't die from that shell wound," answered her father. "But I had better tell the story from the beginning, since you seem to be so anxious to hear it."
"You must remember, Dick, that Jack is something of a soldier himself. He is a captain of the cadets, you know," remarked the mother of the lad.
"Oh, but that isn't like being a real soldier and fighting for Uncle Sam!" protested the youth.
"This Lorimer Spell, the fellow I saved, was a tall, lanky Texan who joined our command after we arrived in France. Just how he got in I can't say. He was rather a quiet sort of man, and some of the soldiers thought he was decidedly queer. He took a great interest in botany and geology, and I take it he was something of a student in those lines, although he was by no means well educated.
"The day that he was knocked out by a fragment of a shell was a misty one—the kind of a mist that makes it very uncertain to see any great distance. We did not know how close some of the Huns might be, and as a matter of fact they were closer than we expected, and some time later two of our men were shot down while moving from one trench to another close by.
"When Spell went down I was over a hundred feet away from him. Before he became unconscious he tried to crawl back to the trench from which he had come. But evidently he was confused and went down in plain sight of the Huns.
"I didn't care very much for the man, as I told you before, but I could not see him remain there exposed to the fire of the enemy, and so without thinking twice I jumped up out of the trench and ran across the ground to where he was lying. The shells had torn the soil dreadfully, so that I had considerable difficulty in reaching him.
"I placed him on my shoulder, and just then several Huns began firing at us. One bullet grazed my side, giving me a deep scratch, and another went through the cloth of Spell's coat. I stumbled down into a shell crater with the man and had all I could do to drag him and myself out. Then I plunged forward again, and just as the Huns let out several more shots, both of us stumbled down into the trench, and the rescue, if you might call it such, was over."
"Well, I think that was a grand thing to do, Dad!" burst out Jack, his face beaming. "Simply grand!"