“Wait, Doc. There’s another just as bad. He’s—the other’s a Yank.”
The spokesman again jerked his comrades into further evidence. One of the bearers was an American, the other a captured German, slightly wounded. Between them lay a figure in the gray uniform of a correspondent. A heavy growth of beard made the man almost unrecognizable, but something tugged at the chief’s memory and set him speculating. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder toward the nurse, then lowered his voice.
“You haven’t any idea who it is, have you?”
“Sure. He’s the A. P. man that’s been with our division from the first. His name’s Brooks.”
The chalice fell through Sheila’s fingers and struck the altar steps with a sharp, metallic ring. The next instant she was beside the chief, looking down with wide, unbelieving eyes at the stretcher which held nothing familiar but the gray uniform—and there were many men wearing the same. It could not be. This was not the way Peter was coming back to her. In all the days of horror, of caring for the hundreds of wounded, it had never entered her mind that war might claim the man she loved. Her love, and the fulfilment thereof, had stood out as the one absolute reality of life, the thing that could not fail. This simply could not be; Peter was still far away, but coming, supreme in his strength, invulnerable in his love and promise to her.
“You—don’t know him?” The chief asked it hopefully.
The girl shook her head. “He can’t be—The beard—Wait.” Her hand slipped through the opening in his uniform to an inside pocket. She drew out a flat bundle of papers, and the first glance told her all she needed to know. There was Peter’s unmistakable scribbling on the uppermost, and from under it showed the corner of one of her letters to him.
The chief’s hand steadied her. “No time to lose, girl, but we’ll pull him through. We’ve got to fight for it, but we’ll do it. Easy there, boys. Take him over to the table, there, under the light.”
But Sheila O’Leary put out a detaining hand. Her eyes were no longer on Peter; she was looking at the figure on the other stretcher. “What did you say about that French boy?”
“He’ll have to go, poor chap! There isn’t time for both. Listen, Leerie,” as a flash of pain swept the girl’s face, “it’s a toss-up between them who’s worse, and it’s down now to a matter of minutes. It means the best team-work we’ve done yet to save just your man.”