EVEN next morning when Father Duprey arrived to go over the plan again, Mme. Gagnon was still protesting uneasily.

Father Duprey clasped his hands, beaming. “Think of the good that will come to all.”

Marie’s mother nodded her head doubtfully.

The next step after preparing Mme. Gagnon for her role was to instruct the flyer in his part.

Leaving Marie on watch downstairs, Pierre and the priest, trailed by André, clumped up the dark staircase to the attic.

Ronald Pitt listened to them quietly and shrugged when Father Duprey asked, “You agree, my son? It is a good scheme, you think?”

“Well, I’m in your hands,” the young Englishman replied. “But I’d certainly feel foul if I got you into trouble. Of course, I’m willing to take any kind of chance. The sooner I get back to my squadron the better. I think you can guess what’s up in England. It’s my bet the invasion is coming any day now.”

“It can’t come too soon,” Pierre said eagerly.

Soon after that, work on the farm began as on an ordinary day. In spite of the Gagnons’ desire to appear untroubled, however, they paused often to listen and look around them.

Rumors of the Nazi search party reached them from all sides. The village women trundled from house to house bemoaning the loss of their copper cooking pots.

At two o’clock that afternoon the priest’s housekeeper brought a package. A message said that all arrangements had been completed. At exactly four o’clock the ambulance would arrive before Pierre’s house. Mme. Gagnon was to be ready to leave instantly. The party must arrive at a point near the hospital at exactly five o’clock.

Marie packed clothes for her mother and laid out her own best dress. Even though she would be returning that same evening, she also prepared a small lunch basket. The hospital was only about eighteen miles away, but food might be difficult to find and expensive to buy.

André was given the job of coaching Ronald Pitt. He climbed the attic stairs filled with excitement but also full of laughter. For the disguise that Father Duprey had chosen for the flyer was a nun’s outfit of clothing.

When the young Englishman had put on the long, full, black robe, André stood back and studied him, his eyes dancing. And from under the starched headdress that framed his narrow face the flyer’s blue eyes danced just as gaily.

André said, “You make a pretty nun.” And grinning, he finished, “I did not think Spitfire pilots were so chic.”

Then recalling the serious instructions his father had given him for Ronald, he repeated them. “Be ready to come downstairs just before four o’clock. Get into the ambulance quickly, right after they put Maman’s stretcher in. The family will try to surround you. The driver is a Maquis and he’s used to this kind of business.

“Now,” André finished, “my father says to be sure you don’t leave anything behind you for the Germans to find. And Marie will come in a few minutes to put the cot and all this stuff away.”

“Splendid.” Ronald looked down at the boy. “I’d hate to see my young brother exposed to all this danger you’re so cheerful about. Well, now I must practice a bit.” He took a sedate turn between the cot and the window, grinning at the French boy. And he practiced sitting down demurely.

It had been raining gustily all day but stopped about three, and the wind dropped.

For some time the village had been quiet—the Nazi squad busy among outlying farms.

As four o’clock neared, Mme. Gagnon was upstairs, dressed and wrapped in a shawl, ready to be hurried onto the stretcher.

In the shuttered little parlor, a dark-robed figure stood in the shadow beside the hallway door.

André stood watch at a window on the road, and his father and Marie paced the stone-floored kitchen.

Then, electrically, the silence was broken by the rumble of an approaching car. André drew the curtain aside a little.

At his stifled cry Marie and her father rushed to the window.

A German army truck crammed with armed soldiers was slowing up on the road. And at that same moment, from the opposite direction, the closed black ambulance rolled up to the Gagnon door.

Almost before the ambulance had braked to a stop Father Duprey’s tall, erect figure swung down from the front seat, and Pierre rushed to admit him. The driver immediately began to back the long vehicle close to the door.

Marie cried softly, “Heavens, Father, what a calamity! The Nazis! What can we do?”

“We can act sensible,” said Father Duprey, “and waste no time moaning about what we can’t help. Those men are evidently going to search the Julliard farm next door before they come here. Let the driver in with the stretcher, daughter, so we lose no time getting Mme. Gagnon away.”

The driver sidled in and M. Gagnon seized the stretcher. The two men hurried up the stairs.

A few seconds later the creaking steps warned André that his mother was being carried down. He signaled Ronald to be ready for his dash.

“Now,” said Father Duprey to Marie, “sob a little, but not enough to draw much attention.”

André held the door while the little procession puffed and brushed through. Mme. Gagnon was lifted easily in through the ambulance door. And a moment later, Ronald, clutching his awkward bundle of skirts as naturally as he could, climbed in and crouched beside the stretcher. His face was hidden by the width of his headdress, and he bent gently over the sick woman.

“It is all going like clockwork, madame,” he whispered. “Don’t be frightened.”

“I—I’m afraid,” murmured Mme. Gagnon, “more for Pierre, for Marie and André....”

Standing by the road, Pierre looked with mounting anxiety at the soldiers prowling through the farm next door. They were not spending much time there.

In all his later life André never forgot the next few minutes.

Mme. Gagnon called, “Pierre! Pierre, please come with me.”

And just then Raoul Cotein bicycled briskly up, shouting, “Mon Dieu, Gagnon, what are you up to now?”

He set his bicycle against the wall and stared into the open end of the ambulance.

“What’s the trouble here?” he demanded loudly as his eyes rolled toward the strange nun.

“Get on with your business, Raoul,” M. Gagnon ordered. “My wife is ill, as you well know, and you are not needed here.”

Father Duprey’s black eyes were traveling swiftly from the hunched figures in the dimness of the ambulance to the Germans only two or three hundred yards away.

André boosted Marie in beside her mother, and M. Gagnon closed the door upon them. Father Duprey said calmly, “You may as well come along, Pierre. It will comfort your wife. I’ll see that you and Marie get home tonight.”

“But André—” Pierre whispered.

André tugged at his arm. “Go. Go, Papa,” he urged. “I can take care of everything—only go.”

Down the road, the Nazis were piling back into their truck and the starter whined.

He opened the door to find a Nazi officer frowning at him

Father Duprey seized Pierre’s arm and whipped him swiftly forward and up to the seat in front.

He had no more than slid into the seat himself when the Maquis driver rocked the old ambulance into action with a crash of gears. The machine swayed into a turn and roared away toward Ste. Mère Église.

André watched it go for a long minute.

The German army truck started, but halted a little distance off, and the sharp voice of the officer giving commands drifted toward them.

Raoul Cotein shifted his feet. “Uh—I have things to do,” he cried suddenly. He flung a leg over his bicycle, and peddling furiously, was soon gone.

André moved idly toward the house. Once through his own door, the boy trotted quickly into the kitchen.

He untied his dog and put him in the dimly lit cow barn. As he snapped the door fastening, he spoke warningly, “Not a sound out of you, Patchou. Remember!”

He got back into the house just in time to answer a loud thumping at the front door. He opened it to find a Nazi officer and several hard-faced soldiers frowning down at him.