Everywhere the boys observed also that there were more people in the towns and villages than the sizes of these places seemed to warrant, and in the fields and woods, in uncultivated or otherwise barren spots little settlements of tents and rude shelters had been established as evidence of the wide exodus from the battle-scarred areas far to the east and north. Hundreds of thousands of people, driven from their ruined or threatened homes, had thus overrun the none too sparsely inhabited sections beyond the war-torn region. “_Non, non, non, non!_” That was the common refrain directed by Herbert and Donald to the solicitations of the French, for the purchase of sundry articles, mostly of edible character, whenever the car was forced to stop. “If you want to get rid of your money very quickly,” Herbert explained to the three Red Cross nurses riding with them in the rear of the ambulance, “you can sure do it if you patronize these sharpers. Their goods are all right generally, but the prices--phew! They must think every American is a millionaire.” “And yet one must pity many of them; they have suffered and are suffering so much,” said the eldest nurse, a sweet-faced woman whose gray hairs denoted that she was past middle age. “They seem to be very patient and really very cheerful,” remarked the somewhat younger woman whose slightly affected drawl and rather superior bearing indicated that she belonged to the higher social circles somewhere back in the U. S. And then up spoke the third, a mere slip of a girl, who had been quite silent until now. “I have wondered and wondered what it would all be like, what the people would be like; and now I’m glad I’ve come. Perhaps when the war is over we can do something for these----” “We will every one of us be glad to get home again,” said the gray-haired lady. “You, my dear, will prove no exception, however noble your reconstructive impulses are. But these people, no matter what they have gone through, will be well able to take care of themselves.” And as the car presently dashed on again, Donald remarked to Herbert, so that their passengers could not hear: “Don’t you think, old man, it is very true when they say that patriotism over in the dear old United States has had a remarkable awakening?” “Yes, you can call it that, perhaps, if we were ever really asleep. You refer, I know, to these nurses, evidently ladies of refinement and culture, coming over here for duties that they must know can’t be any cinch. The women, if anything, have led the men at home in their zeal for helping toward making our part in this scrap a good one.” “Very good and all honor to the women,” Don said, “but I guess, from what you and I have both seen and will soon see again, that which is making America’s part in this war a good one is mostly the scrapping ability of the lads with blood in their eyes. The humane part of it comes afterward.”