As the autumn deepened we found our Red Cross work ending. This work had taken Henry and me from our quiet country newspaper offices in Kansas and had suddenly plunged us into the turmoil of the big war. For days and days we had been riding in motor cars along the line in France from Rouen to Bacarat and often ambulances had hauled us--always more or less frightened--up near the trenches of the front line. We had tramped through miles of hospitals and had snuggled eagerly into the little dugouts and caves that made the first aid posts. We had learned many new and curious things--most of which were rather useless in publishing the Wichita Beacon or the Emporia Gazette; as, for instance, how to wear a gas mask, how to fire a trench mortar, how to look through a trench periscope, and how to duck when a shell comes in. Also we had stood god-father to a serial love affair that began on the boat coming over and was for ever being "continued in our next." And it was all--riding along the line, huddling in abris, sneaking scared to death along trenches, and ducking from the shells--all vastly diverting. We had grown fat on it; not that we needed just that expression of felicity, having four hundred pounds between us. But it was almost finished and we were sadly turning our faces westward to our normal and reasonably honest lives at home, when Medill McCormick came to Paris and tempted us to go to Italy. It was a great temptation; "beyond the Alps lies Italy," as a copy book sentence has lure in it, and as a possible journey to a new phase of the war, it caught us; and we started.