Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/168

 heard the hoofs of a galloping horse upon the road. The rider pulled up short before their cottage and Ruth, running to the door, saw "1583"—the English officer who had waited for her upon the road from Grand'mère Bergues' the night before last.

"They've broken through!" he called to Ruth.

"Through!" Ruth cried. "The Germans!"

"We can't hold them! They're coming on! Fifty thousand of them! They've broken through—through! We couldn't hold them!"

Ruth recoiled upon the door. Mrs. Mayhew was beside her, calling out to the officer; but he, having given the alarm to that house, was going on. Ruth gazed vacantly over the smooth, replowed, replanted French fields and the rows of grafted orchard trees toward Grand'mère Bergues'; and her mind gave her, in a flash, vision of the broken dam of the English line with the German flood bursting through; and before that flood she saw again the refugees of yesterday in flight; she saw Grand'mère Bergues with petite Marie and Victor caught again, perhaps; she saw the wounded on the roads and in the tents of the clearing stations, cut off by the Germans and taken; she saw the English troops—the strong, young men whom she had witnessed marching to the front yesterday battling bravely, desperately, but shot down, bayoneted and overrun.

"They've broken through. We couldn't hold them! They're coming on!"

Ruth gazed from the ground to the sky and she saw—not in her fancy but visually above her now—airplanes, allied airplanes flying in squadrons from the rear toward