In the shuttered little parlor, a dark-robed figure stood in the shadow beside the hallway door. André stood watch at a window on the road, and his father and Marie paced the stone-floored kitchen. Then, electrically, the silence was broken by the rumble of an approaching car. André drew the curtain aside a little. At his stifled cry Marie and her father rushed to the window. A German army truck crammed with armed soldiers was slowing up on the road. And at that same moment, from the opposite direction, the closed black ambulance rolled up to the Gagnon door. Almost before the ambulance had braked to a stop Father Duprey’s tall, erect figure swung down from the front seat, and Pierre rushed to admit him. The driver immediately began to back the long vehicle close to the door. Marie cried softly, “Heavens, Father, what a calamity! The Nazis! What can we do?” “We can act sensible,” said Father Duprey, “and waste no time moaning about what we can’t help. Those men are evidently going to search the Julliard farm next door before they come here. Let the driver in with the stretcher, daughter, so we lose no time getting Mme. Gagnon away.” The driver sidled in and M. Gagnon seized the stretcher. The two men hurried up the stairs. A few seconds later the creaking steps warned André that his mother was being carried down. He signaled Ronald to be ready for his dash. “Now,” said Father Duprey to Marie, “sob a little, but not enough to draw much attention.” André held the door while the little procession puffed and brushed through. Mme. Gagnon was lifted easily in through the ambulance door. And a moment later, Ronald, clutching his awkward bundle of skirts as naturally as he could, climbed in and crouched beside the stretcher. His face was hidden by the width of his headdress, and he bent gently over the sick woman. “It is all going like clockwork, madame,” he whispered. “Don’t be frightened.” “I--I’m afraid,” murmured Mme. Gagnon, “more for Pierre, for Marie and André....” Standing by the road, Pierre looked with mounting anxiety at the soldiers prowling through the farm next door. They were not spending much time there. In all his later life André never forgot the next few minutes. Mme. Gagnon called, “Pierre! Pierre, please come with me.” And just then Raoul Cotein bicycled briskly up, shouting, “_Mon Dieu_, Gagnon, what are you up to now?” He set his bicycle against the wall and stared into the open end of the ambulance. “What’s the trouble here?” he demanded loudly as his eyes rolled toward the strange nun. “Get on with your business, Raoul,” M. Gagnon ordered. “My wife is ill, as you well know, and you are not needed here.” Father Duprey’s black eyes were traveling swiftly from the hunched figures in the dimness of the ambulance to the Germans only two or three hundred yards away.