The studied brutality of that German gun, more than sixty miles away, dispatching its unaimed shells to do methodical, indiscriminate murder in the city, was the sort of thing Ruth needed at that moment to steady her to what lay before her. She was setting herself to this, as to the rest, to help stop forever deeds like the firing of that gun. She hastened on more resolutely; the gun fired again, its monstrous, random shell falling in quite another quarter. Presenting herself at the doors of the hospital, she ascertained that Sergeant Charles Gail, who had originally been enrolled in a Canadian battalion under another name, was still living. Consultation with a nurse evoked the further information that he was conscious at the present minute, but desperately weak; he had been asking many times for his friends or word of his people; it was therefore permissible--indeed, it was desirable--that his sister see him. Ruth followed the nurse between the long rows of beds where boys and men lay until the nurse halted beside a boy whose wide-open eyes gazed up, unmoving, at the ceiling; he was very thin and yellow, but his brows yet held some of the boldness, in the set of his chin was still some of the high spirit of defiance of the picture in the portfolio--the boy who had quarreled with his father four years ago and who had run away to the war. “Here is your sister,” the nurse told him gently in French. “My sister?” he repeated the French words while his eyes sought and found Ruth. A tinge of color came to his cheek; with an effort a hand lifted from the coverlet. “Hello, Cynth,” he said. “They said--you were--here.” Ruth bent and kissed his forehead. “All right, Cynth,” he murmured when she withdrew a little. “You can do that again.” Ruth did it again and sat down beside him. His hand was in hers; and whenever she relaxed her tight grasp of it he stirred impatiently. He did not know she was not his sister. His eyes rested upon hers, but vacantly; he was too exhausted to observe critically; his sister had come, they said; and if she was not exactly as he remembered her, why he had not seen her for four years; a great deal had happened to her, and even more had happened to him. Her lips were soft and warm as his sister’s always had been; her hands were very gentle, and it was awfully good to have her there. Ruth was full of joy that she had dared to come; for she was, to this boy, his sister. “Tell me--about--home,” he begged her. “I’ve brought all my letters,” she said; and opening them with one hand--for he would not have her lose grasp of him--she read the home news until the nurse returned and, nodding, let Ruth know she must go. He could not follow in his mind the simple events related in the letters; but he liked to hear the sentences about home objects, and the names of the people he had loved, and who loved him. “You’ll--come back--tomorrow, Cynth?” he pleaded. Ruth promised and kissed him again and departed.