With the passing weeks Armand de la Tour had grown so much stronger that now his mother and sister began planning to return with him to their own country. As the surgeon offered no objections except a few lingering cautions, the departure became a near prospect, and Lucy was more eager than ever to see as much as possible of Michelle. She lost interest in Franz and Herr Johann and resented their intrusion on her time and thoughts.

“Michelle, there are such a lot of things I haven’t told you and that you haven’t told me,” she said regretfully. “I wish we hadn’t bothered so much with those everlasting Germans!”

They were taking their usual Sunday afternoon walk through the forest, Lucy, Michelle, Bob and Larry. Armand had stayed at the hospital, saving his strength for the journey to France.

At Lucy’s words Bob looked thoughtful. He had not yet told Lucy of Elizabeth’s strange rendezvous. He did not know what to think of it himself. Looking up at the sky, glimpsed through the evergreen boughs, he remarked suddenly:

“Hello, it’s all clouded up. Looks like snow.”

“It does. We’d better start back,” said Larry, for they were far beyond Franz’ clearing, on the other side of the road that wound through the forest toward Badheim.

Michelle said, pondering over Lucy’s words, “Why cannot you come to France, Lucy, before you go home? Surely we must see each other again.”

“Janet Leslie has invited you to England,” Lucy reminded her. “She is crazy to know you, I’ve written of you so often. Couldn’t you come?”

Michelle shook her head in doubtful soberness. “That rests with Maman and Armand. Money is scarce with us now, and we have not yet a home, except the little house in Chateau-Plessis.”

“Oh, how I’d love to go back there!” cried Lucy, warmed to vivid recollection. “Wouldn’t you love it, Bob? Though Chateau-Plessis doesn’t mean to you quite what it does to me.”

“To me it means some rather bad days spent wondering what had become of Father and you,” said Bob, still half-absorbed in thought, and profoundly annoyed at heart that Franz’ schemes could so absorb him.

Larry broke in, “Leave off reminiscing a minute, will you? As Bob remarked, it’s going to snow. In fact, it’s begun. Suppose we turn back?”

As he spoke big flakes fell lightly on his overcoat sleeve, which he held up for the others’ inspection. No wind stirred in the branches, but the cloudy sky had darkened the forest almost to twilight.

“Well, what’s a snow-storm, anyway, Larry?” asked Lucy, unmoved. “It’s rather nice here, I think, in this queer, dull light. We’re not three miles from the hospital.”

The snowflakes were now falling steadily, seeming to pour down all at once out of the heavens, as though emptied in bucketfuls.

“Ma foi, it is snowing hard!” exclaimed Michelle. “Captain Eaton is right, Lucy. Let us go back.”

Lucy complied and the four turned in their tracks, the snowflakes whirling thickly about them. A cold wind suddenly rose, driving bleakly through the pines and changing the murmur of the green branches to a dismal wail.

“Yes, he’s right,” agreed Lucy, smiling as she drew her cape close around her. “A little snowstorm can go a long way in a German forest. Bob, will you tell me why you’re so preoccupied?” she asked, looking with uneasy earnestness into her brother’s face. “You’ve spoken twice since we’ve been out.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Bob, seeing no use in keeping Lucy in the dark indefinitely. “It’s about that same stupid mystery. I wish Alan had stayed here to ferret it out. Why did I ever dissuade him?”

“Go on, will you?” begged Lucy.

“All right. A couple of days ago I went to Coblenz to see——Phew!” He stopped to plunge one hand into his collar. “This snow is getting down my neck. Would you believe it could come down so thick all of a sudden? Why, the sky was blue in spots when we started out.”

“Look here, Lucy, you know where that lodge of Herr Johann’s is, don’t you? It must be near, for here’s the road you spoke of.” Larry paused beside the winding forest track, looking along it and through the trees on either side as well as the swirling snowflakes would permit.

“Yes, it’s near here,” said Lucy, “but why?”

“We’d better go there for shelter. The snow may stop and it may not. We’re still two miles from home.”

“But, Larry,” protested Lucy, surprised, “it can’t hurt us. Why, how often I’ve been out in snow-storms!”

“I know, it can’t hurt you, nor Miss Michelle, nor me. But it can hurt Bob. His lungs were touched when he was frozen up in Archangel. The surgeon himself told me he mustn’t risk any exposure.”

“Oh, Larry, what rot! I’m strong enough,” scoffed Bob.

But Lucy was an instant convert to Larry’s side. “He told me that, too. What an idiot I am,” she said in one breath. Then, looking anxiously around her, “Where would you say that hunting-lodge was, Michelle? I know it’s near the road. If we follow along it——”

“I can find it,” said Michelle, starting confidently up the road. “It was all fir and hemlock trees near it, except for a few birches. We must be close to it, Lucy.”

“But it’s idiotic,” said Bob crossly. “Suppose it keeps on snowing?”

“Then you can stay there all night,” said Larry. “I’ll take the girls home and come back. Why be stupid and risk a relapse? You know it’s cold you have to fear—you and Alan both.”

Silenced, Bob followed the others along the road. At the end of ten minutes Michelle cried out and pointed to the little lodge, showing beyond the first fringe of birch and fir trees. Its roof and doorstep were newly covered with snow. The door was padlocked and the red curtains drawn.

“Too bad I haven’t the key Herr Johann offered me,” said Bob as they approached the door.

Larry tugged at the padlock and twisted it, but in vain.

“Try the window,” Lucy suggested.

“Try giving the padlock a good kick,” said Bob. “That usually fetches them.”

Larry stepped back and drove his heavy boot-heel in a sort of backward swing against the side of the lock. The padlock snapped and flew off into the snow. The bar was bent against the staple. Larry wrenched it open and pushed wide the door. “Welcome, in the name of the Kaiser,” he said, sniffing the cold, musty air. “A fire is about the first thing we need.”

“There’s plenty of wood,” said Lucy, as the four entered the lodge and shut the door. “Michelle and I saw the shadow of the flames and heard them crackle while we were shivering in the snow outside. Ouf, I’m almost frozen! It has grown cold. Bob, I hope to goodness you haven’t hurt yourself.”

“Not likely. Why, this would be a warm, enervating spring day in Archangel. There’s the wood, in that bin.”

Bob had struck matches as he spoke, for the lodge, with curtains drawn, was almost dark. He spied a candle on the rough wooden table in the principal room where they stood, and, lighting it, held it up to survey the surroundings. “Not much of a place,” he remarked. “There can’t be but two rooms, altogether.”

“It’s rather nice, though, cozy, if German,” said Larry, throwing pine-boughs on the broad stone hearth.

There was no other furniture in the room than the big table, four or five massive chairs, cut from pine-trunks as rudely as if by Franz’ own hands, and a couple of fox or wolf skins on the pine floor. There was a smoky-beamed ceiling above the red-curtained leaded windows, and trophies of the chase—stag-heads and rabbit skins, together with weapons, shotguns, pistols and sabres—ornamented the unplastered walls.

Larry had kindled the fire, which now began to blaze with a great cheerful light. Lucy drew aside one of the curtains to reveal the hemlock trunks and the dull twilight of the storm.

“Sit down, everybody. We’re here for an hour or two,” said Larry, dusting his sleeves over the hearth and looking rather pleased with his handiwork. “It’s three o’clock. I don’t think it will snow all the afternoon. It seldom does when it comes up in a flurry.”

“I think I’ll explore the other room,” said Bob, nodding toward the closed door beside the hearth. “Herr Johann gave me a free hand, so it can’t be called snooping. Not that I’d feel much scruple——”

“Wait a bit, Bob. Warm up first,” counselled Larry. He threw off his overcoat and sank into a chair beside the girls, who were already drawn up before the fire. He spoke casually, but Lucy discerned in his voice a lingering anxiety for Bob and added her own persuasion.

“There’s no hurry, Bob. Look at that beautiful fire Larry’s made. It’s worth breaking in here for.”

“I wonder what kind of talk has taken place before this hearth,” said Michelle, watching the flames. She glanced about the room and added, “It is very bare. They do not leave anything behind.”

“You may be sure of that,” said Bob. “Else he wouldn’t have invited me here so confidently. Still, he must feel pretty sure by now that I’m not coming. I’ll take a look around. Smarty-cats like Herr Johann sometimes think too poorly of other people’s intelligence. That’s a German failing.”

Lucy was so pleased with the rustic quaintness of the lodge interior, with the leaping fire on the great hearth and the snowflakes falling outside in the shadowy forest that she began to think that Herr Johann might be excused for his oddities.

“I could almost believe that he comes here to hunt in winter,” she declared, stretching her arms behind her head, her cape slipped from her shoulders in the pleasant warmth. “If I had this lodge I shouldn’t be able to keep away from it.”

“I’ll tell you now what I began back there in the forest,” proposed Bob, at this remark. “I told you about my talk with Herr Johann——Did Lucy tell you, Michelle? Well, the next day I went to Coblenz to see Elizabeth, but she was out. Larry and I overtook her by accident, followed her, and saw her meet Franz on one of the terraces of the Rhine Embankment.”

“Meet Franz!” Lucy started up to lean forward, staring into Bob’s face. “Then he’s all right! They did tell the truth!”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Bob demurred. “Either they are all right or Elizabeth is all——”

“Bob!” Lucy caught her brother’s arm in shocked surprise. “Why, Bob, how can you? You don’t suspect—Elizabeth?”

“No, I really don’t. Yet I have reason enough to. She wouldn’t explain anything.”

“Because there was nothing to tell,” cried Lucy confidently. “Oh, now I shan’t worry any more about Franz, if Elizabeth trusts him. Don’t you see, Bob, what that means? Franz is just a disagreeable old German who hates us because we won.”

“Hum, you’re easily convinced,” said Bob, staring into the fire. “I felt for a moment the same way, but now when I think of Herr Johann——”

Bob met Larry’s eyes, lighted with a faint, mocking gleam, and fell silent. Michelle said doubtfully:

“I, too, trust Elizabeth’s friendship for America. But Franz—no, I do not trust him.”

“What in the world can they have to say to each other?” Lucy wondered, thinking it over once more. “Where can she have met him first?”

Larry rose to throw pine-boughs on the fire and remarked, sitting down again, “You’re rather easy, both of you.” He glanced at Lucy and Bob. “All Franz’ and Herr Johann’s plotting and sneaking is forgotten at a word from Elizabeth. I know she’s a good sort and fond of you, but, after all, she’s a Boche. Couldn’t she be influenced by a clever rogue among her fellow-countrymen? There’s not a doubt but that she’s in hand and glove with Franz. Why, Lucy, didn’t we see her meet him by the river? And, more than that, she begged us not to say a word to anyone.”

Lucy shook her head and still spoke confidently. “If she knows Franz and is friends with him it is not to plot against the Allies. I know Elizabeth better than you do, Larry. She’s honest. If she were our enemy she would never have asked Bob to bring her from Berlin.”

“And suppose she wanted to get here for reasons of her own?” Larry muttered under his breath. Aloud he said, “Germany is pretty well down and out. Even those Germans who, like Elizabeth, didn’t favor the war, might be persuaded they must work for her now.”

“Wouldn’t she tell you how she happened to know Franz, Bob?” Lucy asked, almost pleadingly. “I’m sure she will if I ask her.”

“We caught up with her after she left Franz, but I didn’t have much time to question her. And she looked as though she hoped I wouldn’t.”

“How did she behave, Captain Gordon, when she saw you?” asked Michelle. “Did she look frightened?”

“No, she didn’t. Did you think so, Larry?”

“No,” Larry conceded. “She looked surprised and—well—uncomfortable.”

Bob got up and moved toward the door beside the hearth. “Let’s see what’s in here, Larry,” he suggested, trying th............