the commandant; “send her to a sanatorium! This camp is not a lunatic asylum.”
“But,” interposes the nurse in her most discreet voice, “she is really a very nice woman. If you would allow me to take her on as a housemaid in the general hospital, I think I could make something out of her; at least I should like to try.”
“Have your own way,” says the commandant, relenting; “you always do. Now tell me the next trouble. You have something more up your sleeve, I'm sure.”
“Babies,” she replies demurely; “two babies from Amsterdam. Lost, somehow or other, in the flight. No trace of their people. A family in Zaandam has been taking care of them, but can't afford it any longer. So the Amsterdam committee has sent them here.”
The commandant has listened, his cheeks growing redder and redder, his eyes rounder and more prominent. He springs up and paces the floor in wrath.
“Babies!” he cries stormily. “By all the gods, da—those Amsterdammers! Excuse me, but this is too much. Do they think this is a foundling asylum? or a nursing home? Babies! What in Heaven's name am I to do with them? Babies! Where are those babies?”
“Just outside, and very nice babies indeed,” says the nurse, opening the hall door and giving a soft call.
Enter a slim black-haired boy of about three and a half years and a plump golden-haired girl about a year younger. They toddle to the nurse and snuggle against her blue dress and white apron.
Smiling she guides them toward the commandant and says: “Here they are, sir. How do you like them?”
That terrific personage has been suddenly transformed from haircloth into silk. He beams, and pulling out his fat gold watch, coos like a hoarse dove: “Look here, kinderen, come and hear the bells in my tick-tock!”
Presently he has one of them leaning against the inside of each knee, listening ardently to the watch.
“What do you think of that!” he says. “What is your name, youngster?”
“Hendrik,” answers the boy, looking up.
“Hendrik what? You have another name, haven't you?”
The boy shakes his head and looks puzzled, as if the thought of two names were too much for him. “Hendrik,” he repeats more clearly and firmly.
“And what is her name?” asks the commandant, patting the little girl.
“Sooss,” answers the boy. “Mama say 'ickle angel.' Hendrik say Sooss.”
All effort to get any more information from the children was fruitless. They were too small to remember much, and what they did remember was of their own size—only very little things, of no importance except to themselves. The commandant looks at the nurse quizzically.
“Now, miss, you have unloaded these vague babies on me. What do you propose that I should do with them? Adopt them?”
“Not yet, anyhow,” she answers, smiling broadly. “Let us take them up to the camp. I'll bet we can find some one there to look after them. What do you say, sir?”
“Well, well,” he sighs, “have your own way as usual! Just ring that bell for the automobile, als't-Ublieft.”
In the busy sewing-room the two children are standing up on one of the tables. The commandant has an arm around each of them, for they are a little frightened by so much noise and so many eyes looking at them. The chatter dies down, as he speaks in his gruff authoritative voice, but with a twinkle in his eyes, rather like a middle-aged Santa Claus.
“Look here! I've got two fine babies.”
A titter runs through the room.
“Ja, Men'eer,” says one of the women, “congratulations! They are lievelingen—darlings!”
“Silence!” growls the commandant amiably. “None of your impudence, you women. Look here! These two children—I want somebody to adopt them, or at least to take care of them. I will pay for them. Their names are Hendrik and—”
A commotion at the lower end of the room. A thin, dark little woman is standing up, waving her piece of sewing like a flag, her big eyes flaming with excitement.
“Stop!” she cries, hurrying and stumbling forward through the crowd of women and girls. “Oh, stop a minute! They are mine—I lost them—mine, I tell you—lost—mine!”
She reaches the head of the table and flings her arms around the boy, crying: “My Hendrik!”
The boy hesitates a second, startled by the sudden wildness of her caress. Then he presses his hot little face in her neck.
“Lieve moeder!” he murmurs. “Where was you? I looked.”
But the thin, dark little woman has fainted dead away.
The rest we will leave, as the wise commandant does, to the chief nurse.
A SANCTUARY OF TREES
The Baron d'Azan was old—older even than his seventy years. His age showed by contrast as he walked among his trees. They were fresh and flourishing, full of sap and vigor, though many of them had been born long before him.
The tracts of forest which still belonged to his diminished estate were crowded with the growths native to the foot-hills of the Ardennes. In the park around the small chateau, built in a Belgian version of the First Empire style, trees from many lands had been assembled by his father and grandfather: drooping spruces from Norway, dark-pillared cypresses from Italy, spreading cedars from Lebanon, trees of heaven from China, fern-leaved gingkos from Japan, lofty tulip-trees and liquidambars from America, and fantastic sylvan forms from islands of the Southern Ocean. But the royal avenue of beeches! Well, I must tell you more about that, else you can never feel the meaning of this story.
The love of trees was hereditary in the family and antedated their other nobility. The founder of the house had begun life as the son of a forester in Luxemburg. His name was Pol Staar. His fortune and title were the fruit of contracts for horses and provisions which he made with the commissariat of Napoleon I. in the days when the Netherlands were a French province. But though Pol Staar's hands were callous and his manners plain, his tastes were aristocratic. They had been formed young in the company of great trees.
Therefore when he bought his estate of Azan (and took his title from it) he built his chateau in a style which he considered complimentary to his imperial patron, but he was careful also to include within his domain large woodlands in which he could renew the allegiance of his youth. These woodlands he cherished and improved, cutting with discretion, planting with liberality, and rejoicing in the thought that trees like those which had befriended his boyhood would give their friendly protection to his heirs. These are traits of an aristocrat—attachment to the past, and careful provision for posterity. It was in this spirit that Pol Staar, first Baron d'Azan, planted in 1809 the broad avenue of beeches, leading from the chateau straight across the park to the highroad. But he never saw their glory, for he died when they were only twenty years old.
His son and successor was of a different timber and grain; less aristocratic, more bourgeois—a rover, a gambler, a man of fashion. He migrated from the gaming-tables at Spa to the Bourse at Paris, perching at many clubs between and beyond, and making seasonal nests in several places. This left him little time for the Chdteau d'Azan. But he came there every spring and autumn, and showed the family fondness for trees in his own fashion. He loved the forests so much that he ate them. He cut with liberality and planted without discretion. But for the great avenue of beeches he had a saving admiration. Not even to support the gaming-table would he have allowed them to be felled.
When