"Gesegnete Zukunft!" they cried in unison.
Belinda's eyes overflowed. She could only kiss her hand to them and run out. The relieving nurse was in sight.
The wet and windy night had rightly foretold a dreary day. How could the sun have shone when all Belinda's hopes had fallen into such chaos? Self-centered as her thoughts were—centered upon Frank Sanderson and her own troubles—the Red Cross nurse felt as though the very world itself were coming to its end.
There was a third person, however, whom Belinda considered with pity and alarm—Erard. The little man with the harelip and twisted foot had indeed "done his bit" for France.
He could do nothing, this lame Erard, as a soldier of the Republic! Not for him the Médaille Militaire, or the Croix de Guerre, or other honors of the brave poilus. But to save the American flying-man who served under the tri-color, Erard was willing to stand before the firing squad, and would stand there, it was to be presumed, with that same twisted smile on his lips.
That, too, was "for France."
Belinda heard that the court martial would not sit till afternoon. It was to her cousin, Carl, hurrying across the hospital enclosure, that she put a question:
"Oh, Carl, where have they put Erard?"
"A fine little rat he is! What did I tell you?" growled the corporal. "And he's come near getting your—I mean, the Herr Lieutenant Gessler—into trouble by his lies. They have locked the wretched little scoundrel into a room in that old château yonder."
"Is that the prison? Until the French left this neighborhood, the family of the owner lived there. But they stripped it of much of its best furniture when they went away. So it is a prison!"