“Oh, Nathalie, I have been so worried about you,” began her mother plaintively. “I will never let you go off this way again.” But her lamentations were cut short as her daughter cried, “Oh, it’s all right, mumsie; something happened to the car and detained me. But do help me get these hungry boys into the house, for the poor things are just dead with the long ride and for something to eat.” Several minutes later, as the girl came hurrying from the kitchen, where she had been to see if the boys’ supper was ready, she found them lined up in the hall, four pathetically weary little figures. Their pale faces were smeared with railroad dust, and their foreheads oozed perspiration, but their eyes were bright and expectantly keen, on the alert for the something good that they knew was coming. As her eyes swept smilingly down the line, the smile suddenly wavered, as her glance was arrested by the thin, emaciated face of a strange grayish whiteness,—of a peasant lad, who, bewildered with dumb amazement, was staring at her with a dogged look, his dark eyes haunted, as it were, by an expression of fear. He was huddling something in his right arm, a yellowish-brown thing that squirmed and twisted uneasily, while the left sleeve of his soiled shirt-waist, strapped with one suspender, was pinned to his shoulder in an empty, flat way that was infinitely pathetic, for the little lad had only one arm! The girl stared back at the boy with a suppressed cry, as into memory flashed the many stories she had heard of the Belgian and French children who had been so mercilessly ill-treated and maimed by the German soldiers. Oh, this must be one of those refugees. Yes, she dimly remembered now, seeing the word “Belgian” in Mrs. Van Vorst’s letter, which she had read so quickly. With sudden effort, her natural kindliness coming to her aid, she smiled into the fear-haunted eyes, crying gently, as she softly touched him on the one arm, “Is that your dog? Oh, I love dogs. What is his name?” A sudden flash of joyful relief radiated from the boy’s face, momentarily driving away that dulled, cowlike bewilderment from his eyes. It was a look that caused Nathalie’s heart to quiver with pain, for it was the look of some dumb animal that had been wantonly punished or brutally hurt by the hand it loved; a look that haunted her for many days, constantly urging her to try and say something, or do something, so as to drive it away. The next moment a little yellow-brown terrier was crouching on the floor at his master’s feet, while thumping the floor with his tail, and licking his hand, then trying to crawl up his trousers’ leg, as if to get back to the shelter of that one lonely arm. [Illustration: “Is that your dog? Oh, I love dogs!”—_Page 184_.]