Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/219

 German airplane from which a torpedo might have dropped; but she saw only the faint, dragon-fly forms of the French sentinel machines which constantly stood guard over Paris. They circled and spun in and out monotonously, as usual, and undisturbed at their watch; and, with a start, Ruth suddenly remembered. From beyond the German lines in the forest of Saint Gobain, Paris was being bombarded by some monster of Krupp's; the explosion where a haze of débris dust was hanging over the roofs a half mile or more away had been the burst of a shell from that gun. Since the start of the German assault the Germans had been sending these random shells to strike and kill at every half hour for several hours upon almost every day. So Paris had learned to recognize them; Paris had become accustomed to them; Parisians shrugged when they struck. But Ruth did not.

The studied brutality of that German gun, more than sixty miles away, dispatching its unaimed shells to do methodical, indiscriminate murder in the city, was the sort of thing Ruth needed at that moment to steady her to what lay before her. She was setting herself to this, as to the rest, to help stop forever deeds like the firing of that gun. She hastened on more resolutely; the gun fired again, its monstrous, random shell falling in quite another quarter. Presenting herself at the doors of the hospital, she ascertained that Sergeant Charles Gail, who had originally been enrolled in a Canadian battalion under another name, was still living. Consultation with a nurse evoked the further information that he was conscious at the present minute, but desperately weak; he had been asking many times for his friends or word of his people;