“You’re feeling better now; I know you are; really, you must say that, Francois. I can’t bear to see you lying there so still and so white.” Henri hovered about the cot of his wounded brother after the surgeon had dressed and bandaged the injured shoulder.
He had forgotten the war storm that raged outside, and even for the moment ceased to remember that his dearest chum, Billy, was ever at his elbow with ready sympathy.
“Tell me, Francois,” Henri pleaded, “that you are going to get well.”
“Of course he is,” assured a mild voice from the foot of the cot, “but you must come away and give him a chance to sleep.”
“Sleep! With all that roar outside?”
“Perhaps, my boy, the surgeon gave him something that would tend to quiet him. You must calm yourself, and remember that you have your duty with me. He did his duty without fear or question.[74] Are you less a man than your brother?”
The nurse well knew how to manage in a case of this kind. She had tested the metal of a proud young spirit, in the full belief that it would ring true.
“Come along now,” she gently urged. “Let me show you that thought of self does not fit here.”
They stood at the cot side of a mortally wounded Belgian soldier.
“We found a letter in his pocket,” softly voiced the nurse, “saying that he was enclosing a pair of shoes for his three-year-old baby with the money he had earned as a scout in King Albert’s army. Here are the little shoes,” lying on the covering sheet.
Billy felt like he was choking, and Henri simply lifted the border of the nurse’s apron to his lips.
It was several days before Henri obtained permission to talk with his brother. There was so much to talk about that the few minutes allowed were as so many seconds.
“But I’ve news from mother!” confided Henri to Billy—“she was all right when Francois last saw her in Paris, and she got the word I sent her about my going to the chateau, and why I was going. It was Francois who wrote me about the gold and jewels being left behind. Mother tried to get word to me not to take the risk; she said that more than all else she wanted me to come straight[75] to her if I could. It makes me ashamed to see Jules and Francois under the colors and I without, but I’ve made up my mind to do this thing I have set out to do, and I’ll stick until it is finished.”
“You can count me in to the finish, Buddy. You stick to the job and you can safely bet that I’ll stick to you.”
“Don’t I know that, my truest of friends?”
Henri gave Billy a hand-squeeze that made that husky youngster wince.
Francois was rapidly regaining strength, his wound nicely healing, and, with the progress, his interest in Henri’s mission to the Meuse was first in mind.
“In my letter,” he said to Henri, “I feared to give details that might be read by other eyes than yours. You only would know even the name and location of our house by that letter. But I got it all right from mother about the secret hiding place of the fortune.
“Neither Jules, you, nor I had ever learn............