“Brand?” Cherry whispered. “I’ve lost my voice. They say it will come back. I—I don’t know. Can’t do my share. You’ll have to carry on. How I wish I’d been born a boy!” “Buck up, old girl!” Brand exclaimed cheerfully, “you’ll be right back in there again before you know it. “And even if you aren’t,” he added soberly, “you’ve already done more than any other gal in Merry England to help folks keep heads up and hopes high. That’s a whole great big lot.” At that he went marching back down the hill. “Great doings these last two weeks,” he thought to himself. They had worked hard all of them. Truck loads of Brussels sprouts, turnips, carrots, apples and pears had been sent rumbling on their way to London. All their winter’s supplies had been safely stowed away. Beside this they had found time each day for two hours of practice flying. “There’s mother,” he thought soberly. “Somehow, I’ll have to win her over.” Had he but known it his hated enemies, the Jerries, were to give him a lift with his mother. Dave too had been thinking of his mother. As he sat by the open fire with Cherry that evening, he said: “Just had a letter from my mother.” “I hope she’s well,” Cherry replied in her polite, English manner. “Oh! Always!” Dave laughed. “She’s closing our New England home and going with my aunt to Florida. She has an independent income so she gets about.” “What does one do in Florida?” Cherry asked. “Oh, bask in the sun until you’re brown, swim, play tennis, go tarpon fishing,” Dave drawled lazily. “Sounds rather dreamy.” “It is, and unreal too. Do you know?” Dave exclaimed, “I haven’t thought of it before but since I came to England I’ve really just started to live.” “I—I’m glad,” Cherry whispered. “I’ve often thought—” She broke off to listen. “Enemy planes,” she whispered. “Bombers!” Dave nodded. “Sound as if they were right overhead. And they seem so low.” Cherry shuddered. A half minute followed without a sound save the tick-tock of the tall old clock and the drone overhead. Then, of a sudden, with a throaty whisper ten times more startling than a cry, Cherry sprang from her seat. The stillness of the countryside had been shattered by a crash that appeared to come from their own farmyard. Truth was, a bomb had fallen on their village two miles away. _Chapter_ XIV A Dungeon Night There came a second blast. A deathlike silence followed. This was soon enough shattered by the anxious call of the cook, demanding to know if all were well and by the excited cry of the children. Then, from outside, came the honk of an auto horn. The door swung open. A voice shouted: “All out for a moonlit visit to the ancient Norman castle.”