JIMMY came awake trembling. His eyes flinched at the glare of a flashlight. His shoulder jerked convulsively at Top Sergeant Elton's touch. The order, "Convoy! Convoy! Convoy!" wailed like a tolling bell.

He told himself he couldn't possibly go out on another trip. Mind and body alike had numbed. He was fed up on war. He was fed up on shells and shrapnel and machine-gun bullets and planes and bombs and poison gas and mined roads and bridges and all the rest of it. No good dodging facts. He had cracked under the strain.

"You are to deliver ammunition to the batteries," the Top told him, "The Germans are giving way all along the line, but we suspect this is only a strategic retreat, to allow them to entrench and fight back. They'll probably harass the convoy with shell fire from the big guns and bombs from the planes and close fighting from ambush in villages apparently deserted. Mind your step! Keep your eyes and ears and mind alert! Best of luck, Perrin!"

Jimmy did not care for the sound of that last phrase.

Top Sergeant Elton, moving on to the next camion with his warning, left behind in Number Four a confused and shaken boy, very close to mutiny. Jimmy was dazed from lack of sleep and the tension of driving alone through the sound and fury of constant attack in an endless succession of convoys. He couldn't go out again. He wouldn't.

But even while he argued with himself, he dressed and crawled to the ground and cranked old Number Four into life, that the motor might be warmed for an instant start. Probably he wouldn't come back this time. He'd be like the pitcher that went to the well once too often. Well, it didn't matter much.

The convoy loaded with shells of various caliber at some camouflaged park in the open country, and toward morning began its weary grind to the front. Even the weather was irritating. The camions clove through opaque darkness and fog, supplemented by a stealthy cold that insinuated itself beneath Jimmy's sheepskin coat. Under these conditions a fellow couldn't expect anything but the worst.

Even when the sky cleared, the dread still held Jimmy in its clutch. Sunshine was a menace. The coming of a bright day like this left the camions naked targets for the enemy.

On and on wound the convoy toward the front, with the roads growing steadily worse. On either side lining trees lay broken and gashed, and the fields had been ploughed and furrowed by shell fire. Toward noon Jimmy found himself in the midst of a country as white as snow, where sand from trenches, dugouts, and shell and mine craters piled up like an undulating desert.

Villages, dead and deserted, were only piles of crumpled stone. A signpost said "Montdidier", but it could not be right! Montdidier was where they had camped for a week on the Cambrai convoy last November, a tranquil, smiling, dimpling town of green trees and trim houses. Now it sprawled a mass of ruins. Every building lay razed and swept into a jumble of tile and stone and brick. Even the rails leading past the depot were twisted and curved, as if some giant had used them as scythes to mow down walls and trees and homes.

Jimmy shuddered. Guns that had wrought this damage would make kindling of a camion.

The convoy turned right upon a new road. It was a narrow road jammed with traffic. Two lines rushed frantically toward the front. Two others whipped crazily toward the rear. In between, when the charging vehicles held straight, there was a scant six inches of clearance. Jimmy, gripping hard the steering wheel of Number Four, skewed and dodged and scraped hubs in tense agony. He hadn't guessed any road in the world could be so glutted with traffic.

Going up, in twin lines regulated as to speed, were loaded trucks and wagons carrying every conceivable freight from shells to food, tractors with two-men tanks hidden under green camouflage ground cloths, armored cars, towed guns, caissons with galloping horses, marching troops, French and English and American staff cars, and a medley of carts and coaches and wagons and busses that looked as mysterious as the closed vans of a circus parade.

Coming back were racing ambulances, ramshackle motor cars with an overflow of wounded, two-wheeled surreys and four-wheel drays pulled by horses or oxen driven tandem, broken planes and guns and tanks returning for repairs, empty caissons, motor cycles, groups of German prisoners herded like sheep, and refugees afoot led by a priest in funereal black.

Driving called for a fellow's best. But Jimmy managed. When the traffic thinned at a fork of the road, he snarled his displeasure. Probably that meant the parade was over. Hundreds and hundreds of French and Italians, with occasional corvées of German prisoners, worked on this side road, to make and keep it passable for the transport systems. It wound through battered villages in which only one thoroughfare had been cleared of débris, and that a mere alley, twisting and snaking. Ordinarily the route would have kindled Jimmy's imagination by its lure of what lay just around each corner. But to-day, after being shunted off the main road, he was conscious of irritable disappointment. This was a shabby second best.

In his absorption he had forgotten that the convoy was rolling closer and closer to the front lines. Now the bellows of explosions somewhere ahead beat on his raw nerves like an alarm clock. "Wake up!" they seemed to say. "Wake up! Danger! Danger!"

Well, it had to happen sometime. The thing was inevitable. All the convoys lately had been under shell fire. This was the first danger Elton had warned against when he said, "They'll probably harass the convoy with shell fire from the big guns."

Jimmy stiffened with apprehension. For one blind moment of panic he grappled with the temptation to run off the road and wreck his car. That would keep him from the front. He couldn't go on. He couldn't stand it to drive toward the front through a steady bombardment of thundering meteors.

Twenty minutes later, after piloting his car over the brow of a hill and down into the valley beyond, he felt like apologizing to somebody. Batteries of big guns belched and spewed, right enough, but they were French. Not a single shell was coming in. Jimmy's tense face relaxed into a pretty wry, shamefaced grin.

Convoy Sergeant Wills loomed on Number Four's running board.

"What's your load, Perrin?"

"Soixante-quinze shells," Jimmy told him in his best French.

"Oh, 75's," interpreted the sergeant. "We're unloading the camions with 155's here. The others, including yours, go on up."

Jimmy guessed what "on up" meant. It was more than the next hill yonder, more than the kilometers that stretched end on end beyond. "On up" meant the actual front. The grin wiped from his face.

An hour later ten camions resumed their rolling. Number Four, elected pathfinder, carried Sergeant Wills.

"Likely to run into any danger?" Jimmy asked in what he hoped was a casual manner.

Wills pursed his lips. "I'll be surprised if we don't. Naturally the enemy will try to cut off our contact with the French." He paused to shade his eyes with a hand. "See those specks in the sky on ahead? They're planes."

"German?"

"'Fraid so. Never saw so many in one place before. If they splatter machine-gun fire on us, and drop a few bombs in between, it won't be --- nice."

Jimmy went cold again. An overhead attack was the second danger Elton had mentioned. Jimmy wished now, with all his heart, that luck had given him 155's for cargo. Already the camions that had brought those big shells were rolling back to camp.

The sky clouded and lost its smile. A tiny wind, cold and moist, blew from the north, bringing with it the tang of burned gunpowder and smoke. It tickled Jimmy's throat and made him cough. His ears, attuned to the roar of the convoy motors, caught the fainter, smoother hum-m-m-m of planes. All the way up the next hill, along a road that wound through trees, he listened keenly for the broken cadence that would spell German aircraft.

"Slow!" warned Wills, as Number Four reached the summit and the end of the protecting foliage. "Don't rush out and have them all swooping at us. We may have to hide here till dark if ---Glory be! They're French! Not an enemy in the flock! Step on it, Perrin!"

Jimmy should have felt relieved, but he did not. He found himself, all at once, defrauded of his rights. He had keyed himself for danger, and he wanted, curiously enough, to hear its menacing whine. His foot bore viciously on the accelerator. Number Four leaped like a frog.

But wait. Even if the German artillery and planes had failed of their mission, there still remained the danger of ambush in some still and apparently deserted village. What lay ahead was No Man's Land. If some enemy company had entrenched among the ruins, the camions were doomed. The old dread again quickened Jimmy's pulse.

The convoy crept slowly toward a battered town. It had leering eyes, where shells had pierced the masonry, and the vacuous grin of an idiot about to perpetrate some outrage. There were low walls still standing, with crevices for the snouts of machine guns, with protection for soldiers about to launch a hand-grenade attack, and with solid bases for big guns that could spew shrapnel or gas shells. A camion would last about as long as a toy balloon pricked by a pin.

They clattered into the village, which seemed to shrink and shudder at the disturbance. Nothing happened. There was no sign of life. Number Four, holding its breath like the driver, sighed in relief as they swept into the open country beyond.

They threaded another chaos of ruins. A third. A fourth. All were ghost towns.

"Just my luck!" Jimmy snarled.

Now the convoy drew close to the front. A new panorama spread before Jimmy's eyes. It was like turning a page in some pictorial history of the war. Above, the planes dotted the sky. Observation balloons, held by slender anchoring lines, drifted in the wind. On the far horizon palms of smoke waved their fronds. Below, on the road, ceaseless traffic moved resolutely toward the front.

Darkness came at last. The balloons were hauled down for the night, the sky powdered with star-dust, the moon showed for a few minutes and blurred under the clouds, and presently the rain began to beat in Jimmy's face.

He was hopelessly tired. His eyes kept closing and his head drooping. Once Wills nudged him into wakefulness as Number Four bore straight toward a log in the road. He swerved sharply and managed to miss it --only it was not a log, but a dead soldier.

The first was French, but they came to Germans later, scores and scores of them. And then, when the clouds drew back from the moon, he made out other loglike shadows in the fields on either side.

They unloaded in a valley among the guns. It was now near dawn, the zero hour for the attack. Probably all the guns were not firing at once, but it sounded that way to Jimmy. The earth jerked and swayed convulsively. Halfway up the hill beyond, a train of artillery wagons wound toward the crest like a boa constrictor. Higher up, on the brow, six tanks slunk across the skyline. Throughout the valley, in the most businesslike way, the soldiers were forming for the attack.

Nobody seemed to pay any attention to the loaded camions. Corvées had other work to do. Jimmy's mind, prodded by dread, began to weave a web that enmeshed Number Four like a fly caught and saved for destruction. If the attack failed, and if the enemy came sweeping down that hill, the camions would mire in the soft ground and fall easy prey. It might mean only capture; it might mean --- worse.

The contagion of fear spread to Sergeant With. "Dump the shells!" he ordered the drivers. "Step on it! We haven't a minute to spare!"

Dawn pinked the eastern sky for a brief instant, and the gun flashes immediately smeared it a lurid red. Soldiers charged the hill, hidden from the enemy by a barrage of smoke. The tanks clattered and spat. Gun explosions blended into a continuous thunder. The attack was on.

An enemy plane darted back and forth above the nearest observation balloon, thrusting at it now and then, and spewing a shower of machine-gun bullets and incendiary flares. Anti-aircraft guns pocked the sky with white puffs, till it resembled a heavy snow-storm. All at once, without warning, the balloon puffed into flames, and a figure dropped to safety in a parachute. A second balloon fired and drifted down a blazing ball. This time the observer failed to win free. Jimmy closed his eyes for a moment. Real war was not nice.

The 75's were dumped a few feet from the guns, already glowing hot and smoking. They seemed to have an insatiable appetite for shells, and they shrieked and chortled in high ecstasy. Jimmy's ears had numbed. He was temporarily stone deaf, and Wills had to spin him around by the shoulder to attract his attention.

"Crank up!" the sergeant shouted. He swung his arm in quick circles to make clear the order. Probably Wills could not hear his own voice.

With Number Four's motor turning, Jimmy threw in the clutch and creaked into action. He started slowly and reluctantly. He didn't want to go away from there; he wanted to stay, danger or no danger, and watch the battle. Again he felt cheated.

But alter a while, when their ears had cleared and Wills and he were talking together in strange, high-pitched voices, Jimmy chuckled.

"What's the joke?" growled Wills.

"I'm laughing at myself," Jimmy confessed. "I've just discovered what a kid I am. First, back in camp, I was sore because I had to go out on this convoy, with its threats of shell fire and attacking planes and surprise ambushes. Then, up yonder, I was sore because none of those things happened."

Wills grunted. "It's pretty hard," he said with heavy sarcasm, "to frame up a war that satisfies everybody."

Jimmy, properly squelched, lapsed into reflective silence. Wills had missed the point entirely; Jimmy had not meant to crab. He even admitted to himself, in the vernacular of the soldier world, that it was a pretty good old war after all.

Convoys were always interesting, no matter what happened or failed to happen up toward the front. He realized now that he wouldn't have traded the privilege of being on this particular one for all the sleep and safety in the world. There would be others, too, some of them exciting and some of them commonplace. He didn't want to miss a single one. He didn't want to be left back at camp when the camions rolled, not ever.

LATE in September the drive of the Americans and the French in the Argonne came to a disastrous halt. The Germans, forced back to the plateau of Tahure in their retreat, intrenched at the Medeah farm, the center of a triangle east of Rheims, northwest of Verdun, and directly south of Vouziers. Their stronghold was more than an irritant; it menaced effectively the American advance on the right toward Vouziers and the French advance on the left toward Rethel.

After all the usual efforts to dislodge the enemy had failed miserably, somebody at G. Q. G.(15) suggested an attack by tanks.

"It can't be done," he was told. "The tanks would rack themselves to pieces on the long trip to Tahure, or be destroyed on the way up by German artillery and planes. It can't be done."

But Commandant Doumenc, French minister of war, in charge of the automobile service, had his own ideas. "It can be done," he announced. "The tanks can be hauled from the nearest railroad head --- that would be Somme-Suippes --- to the plateau of Tahure on camions."

"On camions! A tank weighs over seven tons! No camion in France can carry that load!"

"Those of the Reserve Mallet can," said Commandant Doumenc simply. "They have always been equal to every task that was committed to them.(16) They will not fail in this crisis."

So it happened that to a groupe of the Reserve Mallet, in camp at Port-à-Binson, came the strangest order it had ever received. All available camions were to report at Somme-Suippes on September 30, equipped to transport two-man Whippet tanks to the plateau of Tahure.

"Run your camion around to the atelier," Top Sergeant Elton told Jimmy, "and help them take off the top and block the springs with four-by-fours so they won't double under."

"What's the big idea?"

"Tank convoy."

"Tank convoy! You mean, haul tanks on the camions?" Jimmy visioned the ponderous steel battering-rams, with their caterpillar treads and solid turrets, and shook his head. "A tank will squash a camion as flat as a pancake. Five tons is our load limit, and a tank must weigh ---"

"Close to seven and one half tons," Elton told him. "Now, don't say it can't be done. Everybody's saying that. Maybe it can't, but orders are orders. We're going to meet the test. Get busy."

They drove to Somme-Suippes that afternoon. Nursing Number Four along, Jimmy clucked sympathetically over its disheveled appearance, for the stripping of the canopy gave it much the appearance of a plucked chicken. Their destination revealed an open field, bisected by twin rusty rails terminating alongside a loading platform. Evidently the train that was to haul the tanks to this point chose to move by night, and the camion drivers were ordered to turn in and get some sleep. Jimmy debated for some time whether or not to stretch out in Number Four's shallow open body, but a threat of rain and a cold wind forced him to take cover with a group that had found a barn nicely bedded with hay.

It proved an unfortunate decision, as several of the fellows explosively pointed out during the course of the night, after encountering the first plague of cooties. Even the flippant, "It is the war!" did not help. It was worse than war.

Sometime before daylight a long train of stubby flat cars, loaded with tanks, pulled into Somme-Suippes. Jimmy, alive with curiosity, was among the first to gather about them for inspection.

The tanks were not pretty. They had sharp angles and square corners, with no attempt at a flowing effect to intrigue the eye. Instead, they were solid, impregnable, terrible monsters, with caterpillar treads to climb over obstacles and down and up through ditches, and with guns to clear a human passageway. They were built for the business of war.

When Number Four backed up the railroad track, over a platform of four-by-four timbers, to the end of a flat car, the tank, jangling and clanking under its own power, inched toward the camion, stuck an investigating nose over the edge, and sprawled to its new resting place as easily as a crocodile slides from its bed of mud to the water.

Number Four's tank, in common with the others, had a name painted on its side. The name was Fifi. But it did not look like that kind of a tank at all.

Jimmy's camion creaked and swayed. Its wheels, with their double tires, groaned protestingly and seemed to spread as if for surer purchase, like the hands and feet of an athlete on all fours when somebody climbs on his back. Sturdy springs flattened against checking blocks. Hinged sides and tail gate wagged uncertainly.

But Number Four bore up under the tremendous weight.

"Attagirl !" said Jimmy. "We'll show 'em yet!"

He let in the clutch with gentle precision. Number Four shivered from radiator to tow hook, choked, hesitated, and then with anguished moans and sighs stumbled away from the flat car.

It was afternoon before the convoy rolled toward the front. Overloaded as they were, the camions made slow progress on the soft roads. Jimmy jockeyed Number Four with infinite skill, in an almost ceaseless shifting of gears, high on downward stretches, second on the level, low on every upward incline. Even so, the gap between him and the car ahead closed and opened like an accordion.

For Number Four had long been weakening under the strain of overwork and inadequate attention. Its brakes would not work at all when Jimmy set them, and one dragged when he did not. The steering apparatus suffered from a spinal affliction, the radiator housed a raging hot-water system, the motor had whooping cough due to a bronchial exhaust pipe, and --- well, any fair-minded medical sergeant would have marked it for sick call.

Sometime, Jimmy told himself bitterly, there'd surely be a period of rest and inaction, when he'd have time to overhaul the motor. Al was due back from the hospital any day now. Together they could instill into Number Four the power and glory that had been its in happier times. But that was for the future; the job of the moment was to prod it through this desert of upturned sand. The fancy intrigued him. Number Four, bearing its tank with humped turret and ugly snout, resembled nothing more than a camel.

Nearer the front the road was pock-marked with shell holes. Jimmy wove about them, skirting other camions that had come to grief and feeling very superior and pleased with himself, till abruptly he felt the wheels crunch down through a false surface.

Number Four had dropped into a depression sheared from the surface by some skimming shell. It halted dead. One rear wheel spun futilely when he fed it the gas, but it could not pull free. He climbed out and dug. He thrust branches under the loose wheel. It was no use. If he knew anything about mired camions, Number Four was stuck fast.

"Attention!"

It was the voice of the French tank driver. Jimmy lifted a sweating face and parted sticky lips till his mouth was a round O. And like this he remained, frozen in sheer wonder, while the tank driver and his gunner performed a miracle.

They laid two huge planks from the rear of the camion to the ground, cranked the monster of a tank, backed it down the runway, and drove it around to the front of Number Four. A towline was attached. Fifi, whanging and clashing with all the noise of a boiler factory, stretched taut the cable and pulled Number Four clear of the hole.

"Voilà!" !" said the Frenchman, showing his teeth. The planks were replaced. Fifi, like an ungainly elephant, crawled up them and came to rest once more on the floor of the camion. "Voilà!" repeated the Frenchman with another grin, and waved Jimmy to drive on.

They were approaching the front now. On the far horizon enemy observation balloons, huge sausages wallowing in cloudy grease, marked their progress. The shells began to come in. They dropped in the fields on either side, exploding with a fury that left Jimmy half deaf but that faded into mere spats compared to the crashes of the camouflaged French heavy artillery, which let loose without warning from brush heaps alongside the road.

Darkness never came. Day changed to a lurid red, a black-fringed tunnel of light that was as big as the world. It was like plunging into the open jaws of some prehistoric monster that spat fire and venom.

The first desultory shelling became a bombardment. Jimmy drove with the road a brilliant ribbon under the flare of the guns. Shrapnel hissed through the air and clanked against the steel sides of the tank, into which driver and gunner had crept for protection. Well, why not? No use being foolhardy. Their test would come the following dawn, when they attacked. Jimmy tightened the strap of his metal helmet, hunched his shoulders, and clucked to Number Four.

He came to the summit of a hill that dipped sharply into a valley. Luckily, he had fallen a good hundred yards behind the car he was following, for Number Four took the hit in its teeth and became a runaway.

Brakes were useless. He threw it into low. But twelve and one-half tons of onrushing weight jeered at the cloying motor, and spun it till the piston rods slapped and the motor sang off key. The camion fell into the valley like a shell flung from a howitzer.

Jimmy braced himself and gripped the steering wheel so tightly that myriad pains shot through his wrists and tip his arms. Dust and sand etched his face like white-hot metal. His shoulders wrenched and tore at the sockets. The wind became a gale in his ears. Number Four, wholly out of control, leaped and tore like a panther.

They were across the floor of the valley and halfway up the hill beyond before Number Four tamed. Here they swung left, circling till they reached a wide, flat promontory, snuggled among the trees, where the convoy ground to a halt.

Jimmy switched off the ignition and looked about him. To the left was a broad road that flowed with traffic. Caissons and mounted guns lumbered by. Mules, burdened with ammunition packs, plodded stolidly toward the front. Staff cars crowded them aside and passed. Detached groups of soldiers shuffled forward. Jimmy's heart quickened with a pleasurable thrill over the preparations for battle. He had helped. He had brought a tank to lead the charge.

But even as he nodded exultantly, his eyes strayed to the right. Over there, in a shelter, half hut and half cave, he saw a first-aid dressing station, with ambulances loading and departing in a steady procession. The shelter was never unoccupied. Stretcher bearers kept it filled to capacity.

Only the long line of camions remained inactive. A fitful shell fire, falling far up the ridge and down in the valley, suggested a reason for the delay. The tanks were too precious to risk exposing them at this time. Either they would be hauled to some safer spot for disposal or be unloaded here once the guns ceased baying.

About midnight the enemy cut loose with a profligate bombardment that raked the entire countryside. Jimmy could not understand the purpose; he had never heard the big guns before except when they fired methodically. Lieutenant Crandall, pausing near Number Four to speak to a brother officer, gave him the clue.

"That's a bad sign," said the C. O. of Company C. "It means the Germans are retreating and will probably spend the night showering the roads and back areas with shells, to save themselves the trouble of hauling along their ammunition or leaving it behind to fall into our hands."

"Then this is as safe a place to roll off the tanks as any other, isn't it?" asked another voice.

Jimmy lost the reply as the two officers walked away. Evidently the final decision was to unload where they were, for the job began during a temporary lull in the firing. The process was to back a camion to an improvised platform and allow the tank to pass over it and feel its way down a plank path to the ground. Once there it scuttled away under its own power.

The work began leisurely enough, with no display of lights, and during a silence that was oppressive. But just as Number Four reached the platform a new clatter pricked Jimmy's eardrums. It was the drone, fast increasing to a steady rumble, of scores of enemy planes overhead. Anti-aircraft batteries joined the chorus, till the reports of the smaller guns near the trenches were drowned by this fresh bedlam. Searchlights seared the sky. Bombs dropped with surly growls and barks. The whole earth trembled.

The rule about showing no lights on convoy went into the discard. It was imperative that the tanks he unloaded and made ready for attack with the least possible delay, danger or no danger.

"Got a flashlight, Perrin?" Lieutenant Crandall called. "Good! Keep it on this side of the runway, to guide the tank. Somebody else take the other. All right now. Rush that tank along ... O. K. Drive your camion away, Perrin, and wait in line."

The guiding flashlights doubled the speed with which the tanks had been run from the camions. All was chaotic rush now, with time the main objective. One tank jumped the planks, toppled, righted itself, and clanked away into the murk. Another broke through. A third, with some kink in its steering wheel, charged a ditch by the roadside and went down and up again like a snake. But in the end they were all unloaded without material damage.

The Reserve Mallet had set a record. For the first time in war, camions had successfully hauled tanks to the front.(17)

It was dawn before the camions started back toward camp. As Jimmy drove away, he could hear the first barrage showering over the plateau of Tahure and the army of tanks clanking forward under cover of the smoke screen. Acrid powder smells bit at his nostrils. His ears ached from the fury of sound. The observation balloons were up again, dim sprawls against the dark horizon. The sky, still dotted with planes, resembled a stagnant pool with scurrying insects swimming in a frenzy, for the French and English and American aviators had come to drive back the enemy fliers, while artillery and tanks and infantry forced the Germans from their stand at Medeah farm.

One by one the balloons burst into flames and fluttered to earth. A plane went out of control and dived, turning over and over as it fell. The barrage ceased. Machine guns and rifles cracked and snapped. As the convoy moved farther away, the explosions became muffled and the air cleared of its pungent tang.

The tanks drove the Germans from Medeah farm and from the plateau of Tahure, opening the roads to Vouziers and Rethel. Jimmy Perrin helped make history that night of September 30.

JIMMY said "O", which was the shape of his open mouth and wide eyes.

Number Four, having conquered the hill, hung poised on the summit as the convoy ground to a halt. Straight ahead to the north, rising above the vineyards of the Champagne sector, a magic city glistened in the morning sun. From its midst rose the majestic Cathedral of Rheims.

Al said, "Fella, that's a knock-out."

For Al was back from the hospital. He had arrived the night before at Port-à-Binson, the Reserve Mallet camp, just in time to step, albeit with a slight limp, from a wandering Paris meat bus to the familiar drivers' seat of Number Four, outward bound on convoy.

"Yes, siree," Al said, "that's the prettiest church I ever saw." Subconsciously Jimmy noted that the verb dropped into the proper form of the past tense. But it was the memory of Al's past declarations about being "off scenery" that made Jimmy whistle softly. The other bristled. "Say, is there any army regulation that says a fella can't like pretty sights?"

"Why, no," Jimmy agreed, "certainly not." And there the conversation dropped. Jimmy suspected Al shared to a certain degree his own awakening appreciation of beauty. This first glimpse of Rheims and its cathedral had been an alarm clock to a sleeping faculty.

Al sighed in deep contentment. "It's good to be back," he admitted. "I'm going to get a real kick out of the first roll call, listening to the Top run through the list of privates till he comes to 'Long' and then snapping back at him, 'Here!' Say, I'm hungry. Looks like the convoy's gone to sleep standing up. Let's eat."

"How about a sandwich, Al? There's a loaf of bread and some goldfish in the locker. I'll get them."

Jimmy tossed up the hard-crusted war bread as if he were forward-passing a football. The flat can of salmon, bulkily wrapped in newspaper, eluded his groping fingers in the locker, but presently he drew it forth and tossed it to Al with a single motion.

"Wait a minute," he said, climbing to the seat and staring hard at the package. "That isn't the goldfish."

"What else could it be, fella?" Al broke the string and loosened the wrapper. "Why---why, this isn't a can at all. It's a cardboard box."

Jimmy reached for it with a sharp exclamation. In the scuffle the cover dropped off, to reveal a green and red ribbon, upon which hung a bronze maltese cross with swords. It was a croix de guerre.

Al looked at the medal in utter bewilderment. It must have been the sight of Jimmy's face, red as a lobster, that gave him the clue.

"Yours, fella?"

Jimmy nodded guiltily. Al would have to be told the truth sooner or later, but Jimmy had hoped he would learn about the award from some of the other fellows. That was why he had unhooked the bar from his blouse the night before. He wasn't sure how Al would greet the news.

"For getting those camions unloaded under shell fire in the park that night you were hit," he confessed miserably. "Some of the fellows must have told the C. O."

"Not Kane," said Al between set teeth.

Jimmy grasped at this straw of a changed subject. "No, it couldn't have been Kane. But the C. O. found out about him, too. Company gossip says he's slated for S. O. S."(18)

"Fair enough," muttered Al. Jimmy waited for him to go on, but Al was strangely silent. Probably he was thinking about the croix de guerre.

"Not sore, are you?"

"Me? Why should I be sore?"

Jimmy put it in awkward words. "Well, you were there, too. You took chances. I --- I don't rate a croix de guerre any more than the other fellows who helped unload, any more than you do. That's what I mean."

"Forget it!" Al said unexpectedly. "You had two coming by rights, one for getting us unloaded and one for dragging me out of the park afterwards." He wet his lips and went on stubbornly, "That's precisely and exactly what I says to Lieutenant Crandall when I landed back in camp with a busted leg."

"Then you're the one who told him what happened!"

"Forget it!" Al snapped again. His expression changed and he looked at Jimmy with twinkling eyes. "Listen. I'll bet when the French general pinned the croy ---I mean cross of war --- on your manly boosom, he up and kissed you on both cheeks. How about it? Say, I'd have swapped ten years off my life to see that little act."

Jimmy grinned, too, a little sheepishly.

"Convoy's moving," Al cut in, "Head Number Four for Rheims and give me a peek at something new. Me, I'm tired of doing nothing in a hospital and sniffing chloroform instead of gunpowder. Let's go."

Rheims, which had looked so immaculate at a distance, ceased smiling as they rolled closer. A vast city in peace times and teeming with life, it slept now silent and deserted. The cathedral revealed gashes and scars from shell fire. Houses of stone had crumpled into the streets, completely blocking all traffic for blocks. The convoy, picking its way along a tortuous, twisting lane that had been opened, eventually won clear to a residential section, practically unscathed.

Even here the houses fronting the boulevard told a story. As in an American city, they came flush with the sidewalk, with lawn plots on beyond to the street. Over all these plots now lay tangles of barbed wire, forming a protecting barrier to ward off the enemy.

"Remember our Minute Men of the Revolution, Al. I think the Germans, when they entered Rheims, suffered like the British in that other war. They marched down this very street probably, but from every house, cut off by its wire entanglement, a smattering of shots must have greeted them."

"Didn't the city ever fall?" Al asked idly. He looked on beyond to the crumpled houses, some single walls, some roofless, some spun askew. "If it didn't, it was certainly pushed enough."

"No." Jimmy dragged from his memory the story of Rheims. "But always, since 1914, the Germans have been at the gates. For months they were dug in a mile or two away. Each day they shelled Rheims, tearing it to pieces. But the only time they ever entered the city, they were promptly repulsed and had to retreat."

"History," sniffed Al.

"Yes, history. But to-morrow morning, when we start hauling tanks to the front, we'll be making history, too. Some day you may be reading about it in a book."

There was a roll call in Rheims that next morning, and Jimmy was sure Al's exultant "Here!" could be heard a block away. Even the Top grinned.

The tanks came to Rheims by rail and were loaded upon the camions in the freight yard. From that point they were routed through Berry-au-Bac to Lor, some thirty kilometers north.

Everything went wrong with that convoy. A bridge broke down. Camions stalled and were pulled free by tractors with four-wheel drives. Traffic jams blocked the road for hours. By night the rain, cold and blinding, came down in torrents. But the tanks reached Lor.

Here the Germans took a hand, shelling the woods at the unloading point. Planes bombed. Machine guns spat. The sky rainbowed with Very lights and rocket signals. But the work went on steadily till the last tank rested its caterpillar tread upon firm ground.

Al, waiting restlessly, stopped Sergeant Kane. "Say, any objection to my rambling over yonder, where the C. O. is, and watching the fireworks?"

"Certainly there's an objection. Lieutenant Crandall is there as a matter of duty, keeping that exposed area as clear as possible. Stay by your camion. Remember, Long, that's an order."

"He can't tell me where to get off!" Al snarled, after Sergeant Kane had walked away.

Jimmy watched his driving partner with the old feeling of helplessness. He could read Al's mind like a book; he knew already the other was planning how to make his goal without being observed. A quick race back of the camions . . . a crouching stalk behind that row of bushes ... some shadow that would hide him from Lieutenant Crandall. Jimmy's lips pressed together.

Al took three steps and stopped. "Oh, what's the difference!" he said, with a vast pretense of changing his mind about wanting to go. He came back to the camion.

Jimmy whistled softly to himself. It was the same kind of a whistle Al had surprised out of him the day before with his comment about the cathedral.

After roll call in Rheims the following morning, Top Sergeant Elton smoothed a tvpewritten slip in his hand.

"Sergeant Kane," he read to the waiting company, "will report immediately to headquarters for transportation and traveling orders to Brest."

Jimmy caught Al's snarl of hate.

"Private Perrin is hereby promoted to the rank of sergeant."

Al's toneless murmur rose and soared.

Top Sergeant Elton folded the paper. "In the absence of Lieutenant Crandall," he announced, "our tank convoy to-day will be in charge of Lieutenant McCourt."

Twenty-four hours later, with the last of three hundred tanks hauled from Rheims to Lor, there was another roll call. Lieutenant McCourt, strangely grim and serious, faced them.

"Company, attention!"

The wavering lines straightened.

"Two nights ago, during the unloading of tanks at Lor, your company commander, Lieutenant Crandall, found it necessary in the line of duty to guard an exposed area." Jimmy, his spine prickling, remembered. That was where Al had almost gone against orders. "He was hit by a shell," the voice went on, "and died yesterday in the hospital at Gugnicourt. The entire Reserve joins Company C in mourning the loss of one of its finest officers and gentlemen."

When the company was dismissed, Al remained standing rigidly at attention. Jimmy aroused him by placing a guiding hand on his elbow. They walked away together, but neither spoke. It was no time for words. Tragedy had stalked too close.

UP in the Forest of Fère-en-Tardenois the 103rd Heavy Artillery of the United States 26th Division faced a crisis. Orders had come for an attack the following dawn, with instructions to lay down a heavy barrage to cover the infantry advance.

They said at first it could not be done. The batteries had shells enough only for the night; by morning they would be exhausted. And the nearest supply depot was Meaux.

"One chance," decided a high officer. "Get the Reserve Mallet trucks on the job. If it's possible to haul more shells here in time, they'll make good."

So the call for help went south and west, by telephone, by runner, by motor cycle, by liaison messenger from the French bureau, by staff car from the American Mission headquarters, till it reached Port-à-Binson in the form of an innocent ordre de mouvement.

Captain Creighton, the only officer in camp, smoothed the crumpled pink slip on his field desk, and sensing from the outset something of its importance, read the inserted words with furrowed brow. After the printed form, which translated meant "date and hour of departure", an indelible pencil had scrawled, almost illegibly, "At once! Immediately! Rush!" and down at the bottom, "Must reach destination before dawn tomorrow --- must!"

There were no camions in Port-à-Binson that day. A dozen convoy orders had sent them scurrying in a dozen different directions.

But Captain Creighton accepted the challenge. The Reserve Mallet, he told himself, had never yet failed in an emergency; its record must be kept clean. He whipped from a spindle the itineraries of the various convoys. "Rheims to Berry-au-Bac---" No, that was out of the question. "Soissons to May-en-Multien wouldn't do. "La Ferté Milon to Dulcy le Château Impossible. But the next report brought him up standing. "Meaux to munition park seven kilometers northeast." he read; "Sergeant Perrin in charge." If he could only reach that convoy and reclaim eight of its camions.

He overtook it just short of Barcy.

"Sergeant Perrin," he began abruptly, "we've received an order for eight camions to carry shells to the Forest of Fère-en-Tardenois in time for a bombardment at dawn to-morrow morning. Can you handle the job?"

"Yes, sir," said Jimmy, "barring accidents."

"Anybody could do that," snapped Captain Creighton. "I'm asking for a sergeant with the ingenuity and decision and responsibility and courage to deliver the shells on time, accidents or no accidents. How about it?"

"You can count on me, sir,'' Jimmy promised quietly.

The officer stared hard at him. What he saw was a slim boy of eighteen, with the chevrons on his sleeve so new that Captain Creighton rated him untried and unproved as a sergeant. But there was something in the level eyes that compelled confidence.

"Yes," he said, "I believe I can. Perrin, you've got to make good. Here's a copy of your itinerary." He changed the first name with a pencil. "Empty, Barcy to Meaux; loaded, Meaux to Fère-en-Tardenois, with the intermediate towns clearly marked. And keep moving. The convoy must be there before dawn."

Empty, Barcy to Meaux. It was like the lilt of a chorus that sang its way straight to Jimmy's heart as the eight camions purred rhythmically to the crossroad of the town and adventured forth between waving fields of yellow wheat and red poppies. Empty, Barcy to Meaux. On, fellows, on! Faster! Faster! A "must" convoy! A rush convoy! Around the wide curve to the left, down the hard white highway, and out over the brow of the long hill that dipped sharply south into Meaux. No time for low with a braking motor; neutral now and the wild exhilaration of a rushing coast. Empty, Barcy to Meaux.

No delay in the yards beyond the depot. All right, Number One, tail gate down and back to the door of that freight car. Easy . . . slower . . . whoa . . . no, a little more . . that's it! Load 'em, corvée!

Ready, Two . . . cramp your wheels a bit . . . now come on . . . load . . . Next!

By five in the afternoon the snub-nosed shells, six inches across, were safely transferred to the eight camions, and Sergeant Jimmy Perrin piped a joyous blast to start. They were off.

Loaded, Meaux to Fère-en-Tardenois. Seventy kilometers and fifty minutes as the planes flew; much farther and hours and hours longer by road. Twilight lay somewhere ahead. Then black night, with the convoy sucked into the maw of darkness, but churning triumphantly toward the goal of dawn and the American batteries. Nothing could stop them now. Loaded, Meaux to Fère-en-Tardenois.

"We'll beat the dawn by a good two hours," Jimmy said exultantly to Farr, driving the lead car. "It doesn't get light these days till nearly five. But set a stiff pace. Faster! Faster!"

Camion Number Eight, at the tail of the parade, wailed a signal of distress, and the convoy ground to a halt. It was a broken crank shaft.

"All right, fellows," Jimmy said evenly, shucking off his blouse to set the example, "the shells must go through. We'll distribute Eight's load among the other camions and leave her behind." He pursed his lips to crowd back the offensive, "Snap into it!"

A half hour had been lost before they rolled again. Thirty precious minutes gone at a single gulp. But they'd make up the time; they must.

It was no use. Drivers and motors were eager, but that overload of nearly three-quarters of a ton on each camion floor held them back like a mechanical governor. Slower on the level. Still slower on slight grades. With the gears in low rather than second. Mice nibbled at the schedule Jimmy had set himself.

"Half past three before we make Fère-en-Tardenois," he conceded.

Deems' Number Six camion hit a stone with its left front tire and jerked from the high crown of the French road into the murk of the ditch. The rear wheels, spinning in wet loam, sank almost to the hubs.

"Chains!" Jimmy ordered briskly. "Ready? Give her the gas!"

Number Six quivered, jolted forward a few inches, and settled back into the mud.

"Back up Five and use the towline!"

But even with both camions straining, Number Six would not budge. Jimmy wiped the moisture from his forehead. His wrist watch ticked like a tolling bell.

"Put Four ahead of Five," he said desperately, "and tow tandem." Al was at the wheel of Number Four.

The first effort failed, but with the three motors pulling in unison the mired camion finally sucked free to the hard surface of the road.

"Fère-en-Tardenois by four o'clock," Jimmy promised, but there was no confidence in his voice.

Five minutes later the lead car ground to a halt with screaming brakes. Ahead the road was blocked by the encroaching carts and wagons of a French infantry regiment that had dropped back into the field to make camp. Another delay.

Jimmy straightened with a jerk. "Go through!" he told Farr.

"But I can't make it. I'll hit something."

"All right. Run through; that's all I ask. The rule of war is to keep roads to the front clear, and the Reserve Mallet has the right of way over everything on wheels. Step on it!"

Number One of the Yellow Umbrellas crashed into the converging vehicles. Its sturdy front fender jostled a rickety dray, loaded with straw, into the ditch; its protecting radiator gate sheared clean a wheel from some ancient Paris bus; one last cart splintered and collapsed before the onslaught. But Number One went through unscathed, with a gap opened for the camions that followed.

Five more minutes were whittled from the meager margin of safety ---but it might have been thirty if they had waited for the poilus to clear the road. Wreckage and wrath behind. No matter. The French had been at fault; the convoy must go on. Dawn waited over the edge of the world.

Loaded, Meaux to Fère-en-Tardenois. Over and over the motors crooned the symphony, low and soft on stringed instruments; then, unexpectedly, the brasses caught it up and swelled and throbbed crescendo . . .

The brasses identified themselves as a plane overhead in the fading sky. It had a thin white cross under each wing and the green, slimy belly of a fish. German! As Jimmy watched, sucking in his breath, the plane circled. gaining altitude, till it was high above the road in front; then the aviator cut off his motor and zoomed straight at the convoy. Jimmy had never known such paralyzing fear in his life.

Tac-tac-tac-tac spat its machine gun in deafening clamor. Ahead, on the right, the leaves of a tree fluttered and fell as they might under the pelt of a driving hailstorm. Tac-tac-tac-tac. The dust in the road dimpled. Tac-tac-tac-tac. The raking gun blew its gust on bushes lining the road at the left.

"Stop?" asked Farr. The word was no more than a hoarse grunt.

"Keep going!" Jimmy ordered. "If we can reach that strip of woods just ahead before he circles back, he may lose us."

They swept into the cover of the dense trees to the accompaniment of a second attack. Happily the road. once inside this shelter, curved sharply left, else the spraying bullets might have scored a lucky hit. Halted, they heard them cut a swathe to the right like some invisible scythe. Dusk was over the land now, and presently the enemy plane, after one last salvo, turned tail and winged for the safety of its own lines.

"Ten more minutes lost," groaned Jimmy. "Fère-en-Tardenois by 4.15."

The German batteries took a hand. Bang! roared a great gun. Bang! bang! bang! --- a pause --- bang! bang! bang! bang! --- another pause --- bang! bang! bang! bang! On ahead, where the road ran high and naked. something that resembled trailing silk streamers swished through the air, and hit, and became unbelievable sounds of exploding fury.

Jimmy took his fingers from his ears and closed his mouth. "Shelling the road to stop us, and leaving gaps between their firing, just as they did at the munition dump. What do they think we are, anyhow --brainless kids?" It was like an insult to his intelligence.

One by one, in between that spaced quartet of crashes, he sent the camions skulking across the exposed area, chafing over the delay but otherwise undisturbed. He'd learned that lesson; there were more ways than one to skin a cat.

They plunged on through the night, to the constant urging of Jimmy's "Faster! Faster!" till a road guard pulled them up short.

"Poison gas on ahead," he warned. "Better wait an hour or two for the air to clear before you drop into the valley."

The road guard must have thought the American sergeant quite mad, for Jimmy greeted the news with a wild laugh. Wait! They couldn't wait; they had to go through. A "must" convoy! A rush convoy! Couldn't the road guard understand?

"Gas masks!" Jimmy yelled, running from camion to camion. "Put 'em and keep 'em on while we cross the next valley."

He died a thousand deaths as the convoy dipped into the foul valley. His run along the camion line had left him winded. With the cumbersome gas mask adjusted over his face, he could not seem to breathe; it clamped his nose with thumb and forefinger and pressed a damp palm against his mouth. He choked and fought for air. The pungent odor of peach pits bit at his nostrils . . . Well, better peach pits than loathsome mustard.

Once or twice, when the camion he was riding sputtered and choked, his heart stood still, for he knew that heavy poison gas was capable of paralyzing the sturdiest motor. But the convoy crept forward without stalling, felt its way gingerly across the lowlands, and fought upward to the haven of open fields and a purifying breeze.

They won free of the poisoned valley. They charged forward into the black dungeon of night. No pause to order off gas masks; the loss of minutes might spell defeat. Time rode the drivers' seat of each camion, sweaty hands on the steering wheel, remorseless foot on the accelerator. It was racing the dawn to Fère-en-Tardenois.

A new breeze, warm, redolent of flowers, whispered to Jimmy. The dawn wind? No, it couldn't be; it mustn't be. And then, straight ahead, toward the east, light shimmered, like a grimacing, unclean will-o'-the-wisp. Jimmy's aching eyes saw but would not believe, till the glowing effulgence etched in silhouette a foreground of walls and bushes and trees.

The dawn had come! The sun had beaten the convoy to the Forest of Fère-en-Tardenois!

"Something burning." said Farr's voice in his ear; and Jimmy had never heard more heartening words. They meant the light ahead wasn't dawn. 'German bombing plane must have scored a direct hit.'

Number One cleared the trees and stopped. It had to stop, for the road was squarely blocked by a blazing camion.

Jimmy slid to the ground and pushed closer. "French Berliet," he muttered to himself, "deserted by its drivers." He shook his head to start his mind ticking. "Can't put out the fire --- too late. Can't pass --- body blazing. When it eats its way to the gas tank --- blam!" Two parallel wrinkles split his forehead. "Yes, sir, if we don't get back out of range, the explosion will shower burning gas over the first few camions of the convoy."

He turned away, lifted an arm to signal Farr, hesitated, pivoted, made a complete revolution.

"No," he said between set teeth, "that's out. We can't wait. The convoy must go on ---right away."

All at once the problem solved itself in Jimmy's active mind. It was very simple. He skirted the rear end of the Berliet, driven wide by the blasts of furnace heat, and bore in toward the cab. Groping fingers snapped on the ignition switch and set the levers of the quadrant. A quick dash past hood and front wheel, with elbow high to shield his face from snapping embers, won him temporary surcease in front of the radiator. Here he stooped and cranked.

The motor roared. Somewhere behind, through that curtain of smoke and flame, he heard voices calling him to come back, to get clear before the tank let loose. He wasted no breath in answer. Head sucked in like a turtle, he fought back to the side of the Berliet and flung himself into the driver's seat Tongues of fire licked at the nape of his neck. The gear-shift handle was a red-hot poker. When he pressed the clutch pedal to the floor, it crunched on charred wood. Irritating, yes; but what of it? The convoy must go on.

The Berliet, ablaze now from tail gate to dash, but with motor and running gear still intact, shuddered and moved. It gathered momentum -sloughed from the hard road---quivered in dumb panic as rear wheels spun on soft ground --- bit and took hold.

Jimmy slashed the gas lever to its last notch and jumped. Driverless, doomed, throttle wide, the Berliet staggered forward into the field to die.

Once more the convoy rolled, racing dawn to Fère-en-Tardenois. Jimmy smothered some glowing sparks on his sleeves and borrowed a string to replace the burned strap of a puttee. Far out in the field the gas tank of the Berliet exploded. A flood of light; then, gradually lowering, a mantle of inky black. Black all about them, behind, to the right, to the left, even ahead, where the east waited patiently for dawn.

"Faster!" implored Jimmy. "Faster! Faster!"

Down grade now, with more than ten tons of momentum to speed the motor of each camion. Number One met the push of the air halfway and made it a gale. Bushes and weeds by the roadside stormed shrilly at its passing. The car lifted and pounced like a tiger.

Troops on the road. Tired, dusty soldiers marching toward the front, to be thrown in as relief for the attack at dawn.

"À droite!" Jimmy shrilled at them. "À droite!"

Faces lifted from under helmets and stared up at him. They were not French at all, but a regiment of Americans. Jimmy translated his warning, "To the right! Keep to the right!"

Hundreds of those American doughboys. Thousands. An endless parade to the front. Watch them, Farr. Crowd them off to the right for the other camions to clear, but don't dare run them down. To the right! Keep to the right! The convoy must go through! A 'must" convoy! A rush convoy!

Trees. A massed infinity of trees, like a solid phalanx of troops. The edge of a forest. The Forest of Fère-en-Tardenois. And still no signs of dawn.

A guard stopped the convoy. Jimmy spat a quick question.

"On ahead about a mile," the guard told him, and lifted his voice in triumphant pæan. "The shells are here!" he shouted; and the cry, relayed again and again, went wandering over that mile and died in the distance. "The shells are here! . . . shells are here! shells . . . here! . . . shells . .

A six-inch gun let loose by the roadside. Another. Another. Still another. The explosions, ten feet distant, crashed and smashed and reverberated. Jimmy had not supposed the world held that much noise. Camions jounced and rattled. The concussions upset the carburetion of the motors, and they spat and back-fired. But on and on the convoy thundered, limping now and then but fighting for its head, down that last straightaway of the race against dawn.

"In here!" commanded a voice. "Turn those trucks in here."

An open space among the trees. Scores of trim boys in khaki leaping forward to unload the precious cargo. No leisurely French corvée, this. Speed. Mercury. Chained lightning. Heave-ho! Out she goes! Over to the caisson! Heave-ho! Keep 'em coming! Look sharp, soldier! Heave-ho! Heave-ho! Heave-ugh-ho! Empty truck! Take it away!

An officer loomed from the semi-darkness to confront Jimmy.

"You in charge of this convoy?"

"Yes, sir," said Jimmy, saluting smartly. A worry began to gnaw at his mind. "I --- I hope, sir, the shells came through in time."

"Time to spare," the officer answered him. "Fifteen minutes yet till the zero hour." He looked curiously at Jimmy's grimy face and torn and burned clothing. "Run into any difficulties making the haul?"

"No, sir" said Sergeant Jimmy Perrin ; "no, sir, none in particular."

CONVOY Sergeant Jimmy Perrin, stuffing maps and itineraries behind the seat cushion of the camion, let in the clutch.

"'Little Bo Peep,' "he said to himself, " 'has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them.'"

What he really meant was that Company C had mislaid all its camions except one, and that he was starting out with that one to scour northern France and help herd the others back to camp.

The Germans, quite unwittingly, had been responsible. They were in full retreat. They were retreating in such pell-mell fashion, indeed, that convoys sent to make contact with the forward pressing Allied divisions found only deserted camps, and had to roll on and on indefinitely to deliver the necessary food and ammunition.

Since the first of November, as a result of this vigorous warfare, the Reserve Mallet had been sadly demoralized. No convoy ever returned on time. Some limped back to camp a few hours late, some a day or more behind schedule, and some waited for succoring gas or a mechanic or a tow before starting on the return trip. Things had gone from bad to worse, till on this particular morning every Company C camion except Number Four was lost somewhere in France.

"Use Four as a staff car," Top Sergeant Elton had said to Jimmy. "She's been patched up and marked ready to roll. Take her out and see if you can locate some of the strays and wangle them back to camp. Here are the itineraries, but they are only starting routes. The camions must be somewhere on beyond."

Jimmy began the trip with a gay song in his heart. He wanted to drive again. He wanted to get away from the thousand and one nagging details that had irked him as convoy sergeant. Number Four would not complain or argue or sulk or confuse him with wrong directions. This promised to be a joy-ride.

For two hours he rolled through cold and fog and darkness, not minding at all and sensing only the exhilaration that comes of driving over strange roads in the night. But with the approach of dawn his spirits lowered. Any minute now the world would wake to the rattle of machine guns, the drum beats of artillery, the shuddering pound of bombs. He wondered if his nerves could hold steady.

Dawn came slinking. The black sky faded into mulatto color and lightened to an opaque gray. It was a chill, misty morning, with the landscape like vague smoke and steel. Jimmy, tense and anxious, waited for the roar of guns that would mark the zero hour.

The world had apparently overslept. Somewhere outside that cavern of fog in which he drove, the guns must be baying. They always let loose at dawn. Right now he had every right to expect booming crashes and echoing explosions, with the little fellows, like mongrel dogs, snapping and snarling excitedly. But he heard nothing. It was as quiet as an early Sunday morning back home.

Something was wrong. Jimmy drove on hour after hour in that oppressive silence, pushing Number Four at top speed, as if he were fleeing from a pestilence. The roar of the motor seemed to profane the muted world.

The guns were still, but on every side Jimmy saw grim reminders of war: mounds crowded close in a cemetery, as if the very space they occupied had been given grudgingly; mounds in every field, rising above withered grass and grain; mounds along the roadside, with crosses reading simply, "A soldier of France", or "One German soldier"; a great mound near a town, with the laconic words on a marker, "Here lie eighteen French and two German soldiers."

"I wish," Jimmy said from his heart, "the war was over."

Once he stopped for directions. It was in a battered little town with a brood of scarred houses, whose roofs resembled stiff hats crunched under the feet of some stomping giant. Exposed holes and cellars stared at the sky like flat, unseeing eyes. But somewhere a band was playing spirited marches.

The music lifted Jimmy's spirits till a bystander explained. It was not a good band, non, monsieur; but consider. During a battle these players acted as stretcher-bearers. Now, after a disastrous engagement, the band had just been recruited to full strength again. Half of its former members lay buried beneath the frozen wheat and poppies in some field.

Jimmy's eyes clouded. "I wish," he said again, "the war was over."

He passed a convoy carrying French civilians, old men and women and young children and babies, who had been held in their villages by the Germans from the start of the war. It was almost tragic to see how happy they were over their liberation. A French troop, going up, stopped to cheer and laugh and talk and shake hands. Jimmy spoke to one youngster of eight or nine, blue-capped like a soldier, blue-putteed, with a miniature poilu uniform, and was answered in guttural German. Interned by the enemy for four long years, these people must almost have lost hope.

"I wish," Jimmy said, looking back as he drove on, "the war was over."

In his newly-acquired territory the road signs had been put up hurriedly. Some had been painted over the German directions; some had been placed on the reverse of the old boards. They pointed to towns and outfits, with guiding arrows and distances. Jimmy read them automatically, to assure himself he was on the right trail, but one brought a little lump to his throat. It combined a vague arrow, pointing to the fleeing Germans, with the letters, "U. S. A."

Jimmy winked once or twice. He was infinitely weary of war. Its tragedy had begun to gnaw. But there was something deeper in his hope that it might end soon, and he admitted it to himself without shame. He was homesick.

The foggy clouds parted enough to let the sun peep through for a moment, and Jimmy saw, covering the old trenches and barbed-wire entanglements like shimmering silk, a network of cobwebs. He wondered if it were prophetic, if it meant that the trenches and wires would never serve again.

Perhaps the war had already passed into history. Perhaps the calm of the forenoon, with France as hushed as it must have been in peace times, spelled the end.

He clung to this belief till, quite without warning, it was shattered into bits. All at once, from every direction, guns roared a terrific bombardment. The ground shook like jelly. Deadly hail whistled overhead through the fog. Dull skies gashed and wailed in agony. Explosions rocked and rumbled a continuous thunder. The world, which had been so sane for hours, went suddenly mad.

For a long quarter-hour the firing raged like an inferno. Then, with desultory guns growling here and there, it died away, leaving again the ghastly, nerve-wracking silence. Somewhere, Jimmy told himself, a sharp, decisive battle had been lost and won during those fifteen minutes.

At the end of another hour he was next door to being lost. Number Four wound along a strange road, that chuckled as it twisted and cavorted around hills and did its best to make mouth and tail meet, till Jimmy lost all sense of direction. The fog, a thin, moist substance though which he passed and which closed behind him again, was part and parcel of the conspiracy. At sight of a dim signpost ahead, standing like a sentinel, lie heaved a sigh of relief.

He ran his camion close to the roadside and peered at the fog-shrouded sign. The board was blank save for some chalked words, and it took him a long minute to make them out. In symbols a foot high, with gewgaws and curlicues, some Frenchman had printed, that all who passed might read: "Paix est signée!"

Jimmy sniffed. He could interpret the sentence easily enough into "Peace is signed", but he didn't believe it. Rumors like that had been flying for weeks. Anyhow, with the recent bombardment still ringing in his ears, he was more interested in road directions than in any wild guesses.

But as he rolled away, doggedly holding the camion upon the curls of ribbon that marked the road, the words kept repeating themselves in his mind. "Peace is signed! Peace is signed!" It might be true.

A few kilometers beyond he drew up behind some inert camions. Closer inspection identified them as Company C Yellow Umbrellas. Off to one side a huge bonfire was burning, with the drivers crowding so close that there was a distinct smell of singed sheepskin in the air.

"I hear," said Jimmy casually, by way of greeting, "that peace has been signed."

"And I hear," retorted a mocking voice, "that the moon is made of green cheese, and that we're all to be promoted, and that those busted trucks there will run under their own power. Tell us another bedtime story, sarge."

Company C had been fed so many rumors in the past that it was hard-boiled.

A French staff car slowed in passing. Through its parted side curtains an officer stuck his head.

"The Germans," he shouted, "have come to terms."

Company C yelled uncomplimentary remarks after the disappearing car. But the fellows came to their feet and began shuffling about the bonfire.

A second car swung close to their side of the road.

"The Germans," a voice shouted, "have agreed to an armistice."

Company C greeted this remark with dignified silence. They were too old campaigners to be caught with any such bait. But Jimmy noticed the wide, staring eyes and the lips that were not quite firm.

Still another staff car shot out of the fog in the distance and came toward them. Jimmy ran into the road and waved it to a full stop.

This car carried a grizzled American colonel. Jimmy saluted smartly and popped out his question, "Is there any truth, sir, in the rumor that peace has been signed?"

The colonel smiled. He climbed stiffly to the ground and looked at Jimmy, and on beyond Jimmy to the dozen other tense figures silhouetted against the flaring bonfire.

"I supposed you boys were celebrating," he temporized.

"Then it's true?" Jimmy cut in, almost forgetting to tack on the respectful "sir." He felt somehow that it would not have mattered much.

"Yes, it's true," agreed the colonel, grinning like a boy. "An armistice has been signed. By mutual agreement, all warfare ceased at eleven o'clock this forenoon. Perhaps you heard, for a quarter hour before then, the heavy firing that marked the end. The guns were pointed skyward. It was an emotional outlet. But promptly at eleven o'clock, on this eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns went silent."

"Does the signing of an armistice, sir, mean there is to be only a temporary peace?"

The colonel was a long time in answering. His eyes, staring into the fog, had a far-away look, as if they were seeing the United States and home.

"No," he said finally, "it means the permanent cessation of hostilities. The Central Powers have sued for peace. There is much work yet to be done in France, however, and I am afraid it will be many months before any of us sail for home. But it will be clean work, without the taint of blood or gunpowder."

Jimmy wet his lips. "Then the war is over?"

The colonel paid no attention to the missing "sir." His eyes rested upon Jimmy, and softened and hungered, as if they were visioning a son of his own.

"The war is over!"

It sounded as if he had said, "Amen!"

JUNE, 1919.

For the tenth time that morning Mr. Perrin dropped an army discharge on the table, stood up, and turned expectantly toward the door. At last he was not disappointed.

"Morning, dad."

Mr. Perrin pointed to the Morris chair beside his own. "Sit down, Jimmy. Sleep well?"

The boy laughed, a little embarrassed. "Not so very. The mattress felt too soft. I couldn't get used to it."

Mr. Perrin cleared his throat. "Last night when you came, Jimmy, we didn't really have a chance to talk confidentially. Your mother --- ah --- rather monopolized you."

"It's your turn now, dad. I'm glad to be back. Everything's the same except---"

"---except yourself," his father finished. "You've changed. You went away an irresponsible youngster and you've come back that youngster's older brother. Jimmy, there's one question I've wanted to ask you ever since I knew you were homeward bound."

"Fire away, dad. I've answered so many questions during the last two years that I've become almost an expert."

Mr. Perrin appeared to have difficulty in choosing his words. Jimmy remembered that other morning in the library, when both father and tutor had studied him with appraising eyes. This time he did not flinch.

"Jimmy, suppose you had it all to do over again--- would you want to go to war?"

There was no hesitation in the boy's reply. "Of course I would. Why not?"

"Looking back now over your experiences in France, Jimmy, can you say honestly that if you hadn't enlisted, you would feel, not only that you had been cheating, but that you had been cheated?"

The words had a familiar ring. Jimmy seemed to have heard them before. He puzzled over the source till he finally remembered.

"Absolutely, dad. Mr. Elliott figured that out for himself, but I had to get into the war to understand what he meant."

"For a youngster brought up as you were, Jimmy, the life of a soldier must have been a trifle difficult at best.''

"It was hard; no question about that." The boy paused to consider. "But I liked it."

Mr. Perrin nodded his appreciation. "Your tutor knew you had it in you. Remember? According to him, every he-man, deep down in his heart, wants to he hungry when he eats, and tired when he sleeps, and able to look out for himself under any circumstances. Jimmy, if you were dropped into the middle of the Sahara Desert, could you manage to look out for yourself?"

"I'm sure I could, dad."

Big print would have spelled the quality of Mr. Perrin's appreciation. He made no effort to conceal his gratification.

"It's worth a lot of effort and sacrifice to acquire that confidence, Jimmy. A lot." He leaned forward. "May I ask you another very personal question? Thanks. Were you ever afraid?"

Jimmy wriggled uncomfortably. This session with his father was fast becoming an inquisition. He didn't want to be pinned down in the witness chair; he didn't want to talk about the war at all. But dad had a right to know.

"I was always afraid," Jimmy said with an effort; and then the words came in a stubborn flood. "I used to think some fellows were brave and some cowardly. I know now that everybody who faces danger is afraid. The thing that really counts is not letting fear bully you. Thad Carrick told me that before we went across. He proved it for himself by joining the Lafayette Escadrille, becoming an ace, and crowding about a dozen years of fighting into that many months. Well, all through the war I tried not to let fear bully me."

Jimmy finished with his forehead damp and his hands clenched. Mr. Perrin straightened his back and took a deep breath. He was plainly satisfied.

"And your test was thorough," he went on proudly, fingering Jimmy's honorable discharge. "Official participation in nine accredited major operations: Cambrai Offensive, Somme Defensive, Aisne Defensive, Montdidier-Noyon Defensive, Champagne-Marne Defensive, Aisne-Marne Offensive, Somme Offensive, Oise-Aisne Offensive, Meuse-Argonne Offensive, to say nothing of still another bar on your Victory Medal for a defensive sector. Ten in all, veteran."

"Ten, old timer."

"Son, what is your most vivid memory of the last two years?"

There was no hesitation this time about Jimmy's response. It was as though his camion had discharged its shells at the front and was rolling back to camp, with all danger behind and a clear road ahead.

"You'll laugh, dad, when I tell you. At Camp Upton, Long Island, just before we were mustered out, AI Long and I were driving two light baggage trucks. I'm not sure we weren't showing off a bit. Anyhow we arrived at a street intersection about the same moment, both of us going lickety-split. It looked like a smash-up. But we'd each learned our lesson during the war. Al forgot all about taking reckless chances, and slowed, and I forgot all about being scared, and put on speed and cleared him nicely. Back before the war, out Nakoma way, if you remember, we both did the wrong thing and crashed."

Mr. Perrin nodded understandingly. "By and large, the war seems to have done your friend Al a lot of good."

Jimmy agreed enthusiastically. "They say it either makes or breaks a fellow. It certainly taught Al quite a few things about himself he needed to know."

"And you, too?"

Jimmy went into his shell again. "Maybe it did."

Mr. Perrin's eyes twinkled, but he was shrewd enough not to force the issue.

"Speaking of Al," he said, "what's he planning to do as a civilian?"

"He's a first-class mechanic, dad, and he wants to work his way through some engineering school."

Mr. Perrin stood up, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. "We can arrange that, Jimmy. If he doesn't care to be under obligations, at least I'll see that he can borrow the money."

Jimmy walked slowly to the big window facing the street. "It seems impossible, dad, that all this is just the same as it was nearly two years ago and that it's stayed the same while ---"

"--- while you were dodging shells and going hungry and sleepless over in France. But it wasn't quite the same with you gone. We missed you, Jimmy, your mother and I, more than you'll ever be able to understand, but we were always glad you were over there instead of here."

His father joined him at the window.

"Whether you knew it or not at the outset, my son, you were hungry for bread of adventure, and I imagine you've had a generous helping. All of our circle who fed on it seem to have thrived. Only yesterday I had a most enthusiastic letter from Elliott. He's attached to the peace commission and has been sent to investigate conditions in Armenia. A splendid fellow, Jimmy, and at last living the sort of life he always wanted. Son, turn around here."

Mr. Perrin looked him over from head to foot.

"Jimmy, I'm proud of you. You've grown up."

"I was fairly well grown up in 1917."

"It's not alone size I mean. Your face has grown up, too. Your expression --- the way your lips come together, the way your chin lifts, the way you meet my eyes --has changed. There's a strength and decision about you that stands out."

"Nearly two years of steady practice, dad."

"You went away, and I've no doubt it was my fault rather than yours, a shy, sheltered, nervous kid. You've come back a man."

Jimmy didn't realize he was doing it, but he squared his shoulders till they would have satisfied the most exacting sergeant of the old regular army.

"This bread of adventure, as Elliot calls it," Mr. Perrin continued, "is a pretty nourishing meal if you can digest it. You've had your share of adventure and travel and meeting people and discovering the niches in your character. I wonder just what it's taught you. Jimmy, do you believe any more that you're the center of the universe or entitled to any special privileges?"

"No, dad. Certainly not." Jimmy wondered why his cheeks burned.

"Do you understand that there come times when a fellow has to do things he doesn't like to do for others or for a countryful of other people?"

"Of course," Jimmy said simply.

"That's worth finding out, son. The biggest thing in the world shouldn't be your own personal ambition, though I hope and believe you've come back with more than ever.''

Jimmy nodded modestly. Dad understood. He was putting into words the things Jimmy felt about himself but couldn't say.

"And ambition, if it is to amount to anything," Mr. Perrin pointed out, "must be built upon the acceptance of responsibilities. Afraid of responsibilities, Jimmy?"

Jimmy shucked out of himself. Dad was entitled to confidences.

'In one way," he said slowly, "I don't like responsibilities, but in another way I do. I'm not afraid of them any longer. Yes, I actually want them, lots and lots of them."

Jimmy caught a faint smile on his father's face.

"Dad!" he protested, with a note of pain in his voice. "Please, dad! I know that sounds pretty high and mighty, but I thought you'd understand. And you're laughing at me!"

Mr. Perrin held out his hand and clasped Jimmy's. "Anything but that! If I'm smiling, it's because I'm happy. I wonder if you realize that for the first time in one lives we've been talking together as equals."

"I hope it won't be the last time, dad," said Perrin, Junior, in quick apology.

"I know it won't, Jimmy," said Perrin, Senior. He smiled again. "It's going to be pleasant having another man about the house."

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