Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine

“I’m sorry,” murmured Grace. “Do you not think, Captain, that, with the lesson she has learned, Mrs. Smythe may more clearly see her error and do better?”

“No!” exploded Captain Boucher. “Besides, there is no place for a woman with her lack of brains in this army. You ought to have the Congressional Medal, but we of the Intelligence Service not only work in the dark, but must be content to be retiring heroes destined to blush unseen in the shadows, while the other fellows are the objects of the world’s acclaim. Your house is under guard, but you are at liberty to return there and make yourselves at home. It has been decided to keep a guard there so long as you ladies occupy the house. Mrs. Smythe has been removed to other lodgings. It will not be necessary for you to see her, and I prefer that you do not report for duty until after her departure. Thank you. You are a clever woman, Mrs. Gray. General Gordon will see to it that you have proper recognition in reports.”

Both German spies were tried within a few days before a military tribunal and sentenced to prison. Grace took charge of the welfare work on the second day after their arrest, Mrs. Smythe then being well on her way toward Brest, whence she was booked for passage to America, a disgraced and unhappy woman, but the Overton girl found no joy in the downfall of her enemy. Rather was she deeply depressed over it, and wished that she might have been able to do something to soften the blow, but the supervisor had made that impossible.

Grace’s mind, however, was at once filled with other affairs, and especially in what her husband wrote to her. He was writing from Paris, which city he was leaving that very day, he having been ordered to Russia on military duty.

Now that Tom Gray had left Europe, Grace began to long for home, but it was a little more than a month later that “Captain” Grace finally severed her connection with the army and bidding good-bye to her friends, entrained for Paris. She and most of the Overton Unit, including Yvonne and the yellow cat, sailed for America and Home, early in the following week.

Grace had passed through experiences on the western front such as few women could boast of; she had won honors, she had made friends in high places, but it was the same Grace Harlowe, gentle, sweet, lovable, unsullied by the scenes through which she had passed, that was returning to the “House Behind the World,” where she hoped to spend many happy, peaceful years with her much loved husband and her new-found daughter Yvonne.

The further adventures of Grace and the splendid girls of the Overton College Unit will be found in a following volume, entitled, “Grace Harlowe’s Overland Riders on the Old Apache Trail.”

THE END