Then to get back to God's country! There came the hitch, they were too late.
Naples, Genoa, and Milan, all were filled with tourist mobs.

They took a train for Paris, and reaching the city just a week before the end of the German drive they found it worse than Italy.

But there Hal had a special pull--and by the use of those wits of his, not to be downed by refusals, he got passage at last for Laura, himself and his new Italian partner.

At midnight, making their way across the panic-stricken city, and at the station struggling through a wild and half crazed multitude of men and women and children, they boarded a train and went rushing westward right along the edge of the storm.

To the north the Germans were so close that Laura was sure she could hear the big guns.