"They'll begin shelling in earnest by midnight. We'll get barrages from both sides. We won't know it, but this town's going to be wiped off the map to-night." The chief said it in his most matter-of-fact voice, but his face showed gray. The girl hushed him. "The boys might hear, and they've been through so much. There's no harm in letting them hope." She turned back to the emergency kettle she was stirring. They were making cocoa and feeding the boys out of the chalice-cups from the altar. To the nurse it seemed like passing the last communion, and though her hands kept steady, her heart seemed drained. Out of the noise and the gathering gloom outside came two more stretcher-loads. The bearers whistled when they saw the red cross on the door. They whistled harder when they pushed it open and looked inside. "Gee! we thought all you outfits had been ordered back!" The bearers laid down their burden on a pew, and the fore one groaned out the words. "We were," the chief spoke. "Sorry we didn't go?" "Dunno. Bet these chaps wouldn't be, though--if they knew. Don't know whether it's any use trying; they're all but gone, Doc." The speaker jerked his head over his shoulder and thumbed a command to the other bearers. "Here you, Jake! You and Fritzie hustle along with yours." As the surgeon bent over to examine, the nurse stopped an instant to listen, then went on feeding her boys. "This one's French." The chief was looking over the first stretcher. "How did you pick him up?" "Got mixed up with a company of _poilus_ in the last scrap. We fought all together." "Hmmmm! He'll need speed or he'll make it. Give me a hand with him, boys, over to the table there." "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."