Betty opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She had learned that any suggestion she might make would be wrongly interpreted by the girls who were engrossed in their own troubles, and so she had wisely decided to say nothing. "I haven't heard from Frank for ever so long," said Mollie, as if the fact had just occurred to her. "I wonder if anything can have happened to him?" "I didn't see any name we knew in the casualty list last night," ventured Betty. "Betty, is that what you read so carefully every night?" asked Mollie, wide-eyed. "Oh, I don't see how you ever have the courage!" as Betty nodded. "If I saw the name of anybody I--I--cared for in that dreadful list, I don't know what I'd do." "Oh, I don't know," returned the Little Captain, while a wistful light grew in her eyes and her lips quivered. "When I don't find--what I'm afraid to find--I feel like a criminal who has been reprieved, and it gives me courage to face another day." Then suddenly the girls saw Betty in her true light. Why, she was suffering too! Think of her reading that awful list every night with fear in her heart! And in the light of this revelation, her brave efforts to cheer them seemed suddenly heroic. "Betty dear," Mollie moved over toward her friend and put an arm about her. "Do you care that much?" A little sob of pent-up misery broke from Betty and she dropped her head on Mollie's shoulder. "Oh, so much!" she whispered brokenly. Then everybody cried a little and the girls called themselves all sorts of awful names for being "brutes" to their adored Little Captain, and when the storm cleared up everything seemed brighter and they could even smile a little. Then that night, when the little god of hope seemed about to take his accustomed place in the hearts of the Outdoor Girls, there came another blow, even more staggering than the ones that had gone before. As Betty was scanning the casualty list with terrified, yet eager, eyes, she gave a little cry, half gasp and half sob that brought the girls running to her. Her face was ashen pale, and she pointed with trembling finger to a name half-way down in the column. "Oh, girls, it's come--it's come! Allen! Allen! It can't be true!" and she dropped her head upon her arms, crumpling the paper in her hand. CHAPTER XX MISSING Mollie took the paper from Betty's unresisting hand, smoothed it out, traced her finger down the column and finally came to the name she sought. "Sergeant Allen Washburn," she read in a small, awed voice, while the other girls crowded close to look over her shoulder. "Dead?" queried Grace breathlessly. "No," Mollie shook her head. "He's among the missing." "That means," said Betty, lifting a face so still and white that it startled the girls, "that he is either dead or worse than dead. I would a thousand times rather he were dead than have him taken prisoner by the Germans." "But we don't know that he has been captured--"