IN early March of 1918 Lieutenant John Malleson was called to Paris, given certain instructions, and told to return to his outfit within three days. As he was about to withdraw the Colonel volunteered a bit of information:

"By the way, Lieutenant, your brother is on his way across. Due with the next contingent from Allentown. I've given him to you. He'll report direct from casuals. . . Oh, it's not an accident---his joining your Section," he added with a wink. "A father or an uncle or a friend perhaps back home often speaks a word, you know . . . "

It was like the old Colonel to state as an afterthought the most interesting thing of all. To have begun with this morsel of gossip would have been contrary to his sense of discipline, a lapse into neighborliness proper enough at home but shocking in the army. When a country doctor climbs into uniform and in a few months sees eagles on his shoulders he can't be too careful.

So Dave was coming. Scrawny little Dave---a soldier. In deep thought Malleson left the Headquarters in the Rue Ganneron and made his way through the darkening streets, careless of salutes and oblivious to mischievous eyes now and then sparkling up at him from the hurrying crowds. He was aware of an obscure regret, oddly tinged with annoyance. Why should Dave go to war? Dave, the kid, ages younger than himself---younger in so many ways not to be measured by years.

He turned in at the University Union, climbed the two flights to his room, and set about shaving, conscious that the latter proceeding, already performed that morning, was now rather a rite than a necessity; one of those minute gestures that at times have so disproportionate an effect on a man's morale. By some absurd connotation Malleson felt that this second scraping of his visage was a concession to the emotion stirred in him by the thought of home. It had something to do with bygone, tranquil evenings, when war was remote, and a romantic springtime was creating her most seductive illusions for the charmed eyes of youth. Malleson caught the tantalizing echo of peace.

But not peace undefiled. When the dabs of lather had been washed away he gazed at the thin brown face in the mirror until he saw it wrinkle into a sardonic grin.

"Lieutenant Malleson, I believe," he muttered, "white man, age twenty-five, United States Army Ambulance Corps, with the French Army. Good. No blots on the record---so far. Not much else on it either. But give him time---give him time!" He rapidly stowed away razor, brush and soap, pulled on a fresh shirt, and while buttoning the blouse continued to stare insultingly into the mirror.

"Strong-handsome--of good repute. Hungry, but about to eat---uniform freshly pressed---new collar---puttees comfortable. Great things---puttees. Strengthen the knees perhaps. Perhaps not. Hair brushed back from broad, commanding brow. Well-groomed, eh? Christ, yes! En avant!"

His sudden march to the door wavered, bore to the right, and landed him by the open window, where he stood, hands in pockets, gazing out into the night. A gentle rain had commenced, and the ghost of a breeze from over the Seine stole in with anodyne sweetness. The streets below were murmuring their perennial insinuation, the delicate sensuous undersong that Paris croons by the shadow of death itself. The little drops glinting past the light of the window fell from a low-arched sky that had the rayless density of charred velvet.

As he stared into that inscrutable void, Malleson felt a somber enchantment descending upon him, vitiating his will, casting over resolution and purpose an inescapable doubt. He felt himself submitted to a vague belittlement; the black sky and the vast caressing night were conspiring to render him laughable. Indignity! That some flippant spirit of nature, conniving with a traitor in his own breast, should take a First Lieutenant, in full uniform too, as a figure for ridicule!

The satiric lightening of his mood brought relief and self revelation. His mind, which had been frisking like a hunting dog chasing trivial game, returned to the true scent and pointed the quarry.

"I wish Dave wouldn't come! I wish he wouldn't!"

He descended to the lobby on his way to the dining room, but paused at the foot of the stairs. After the complicated indecencies of the Front the simple matter of undimmed lights was a blessing; tiled floors, real chairs, and steady warmth were subjects for naïve delight that temporarily subsumed all problems.

In that worrisome year 1918 the University Union was one of the few resorts in Paris where a soldier might sit down without thereby incurring obligations. This was more of a privilege than might be supposed; in war time there is much to sit-and-think about. But, for their own prosperity, inn-keepers are commonly unable to imagine the act of sitting as an end in itself; unless immediate advantage accrues to the "house," the simple operation of placing the haunches on a chair becomes a phenomenon verging on the monstrous.

The Union, though run as a hotel, and receptive to the franc and the dollar, conducted its real business in entirely different medium. It was a gathering-place where men of the colleges retailed among themselves the enthusiasms and disgusts of war-time, and recaptured for an instant the elastic liberty of civilians. Discipline existed, but it was the strict, basic discipline of fellowship, rather than the superficial caveats of the army. Training and culture, or at least the marks of exposure to them, were the insignia. Uniforms became innocuous, and colonels hob-nobbed with buck privates over the annals of the Alma Mater. Here was reestablished a continuity so scandalously broken by the indecorum of nations. Not, of course, with the old vocabulary unchanged; war crept through the talk, and occasionally blood reeked from the casual words of youngsters of the Class of '19 or '20. A visit to the Union meant relaxation; not absolute, however, for a spiritual re-charging took place.

Malleson was not usually averse to dining alone. In fact, during his few days in Paris he had made only one attempt to locate a friend---Kempton. He learned that Kempton, when last heard from, had been somewhere in Flanders, on Field service with the English. No, Kempton, hadn't been in Paris for months. Yes, from all reports he was in good shape, though he'd been wounded---or was it gassed? Anyway, that was quite a while ago . . . . John got his old address, and wrote him a letter, to be forwarded if possible.

To-night, as Malleson stood by the foot of the stairway, he found himself scanning the lobby with curious anxiety for some one to talk to. Men from many colleges were there, but he saw nobody that he knew.

"I wonder if any of these chaps went to Indiana?" he mused. "Surely I ought to be able to spot a Hoosier in all this delegation. Let's see---what are the ear-marks? A solid, unwary friendliness, perhaps; or must I listen for the drawl, that is unmistakable---and nine times out of ten mistaken." Malleson did not pause to investigate his inconsequential mood. There are times when a man, even a reticent man who is perfectly sober, feels expansive and moved to speech.

"Shall I strike up acquaintance with somebody?" he pondered. "It's taking a chance, though I need him only from hors d'oeuvres to smokes. But it'd be just my luck to draw some chap who believes this war is only what can be seen and heard---and that he's seen and heard a lot. Of course he might get drunk---we both might---that would give us truer insight---"

An examination of the register showed that a Captain Tildesly was stopping at the Union. Tildesly had been "second-string" pitcher for one of the Conference teams. John had met him in several games, and had struck up an acquaintance which he felt was sufficiently fond to warrant his inviting the man to dine. Inquiry at the desk revealed that Captain Tildesly was not in his room. The bald old grandee who kept the keys conveyed this information with an air of such unutterable grief that Malleson felt his own disappointment must be puerile indeed. Would Monsieur le Lieutenant wait for Monsieur le Capitaine? Monsieur le Lieutenant would not; Monsieur le Lieutenant was hungry. Eh, bien, then, would Monsieur le Lieutenant leave a note for Monsieur le Capitaine, to be delivered instamment upon his arrival? Monsieur le Lieutenant would and did.

Malleson had progressed to his demi-tasse when Tildesly entered with a companion. They had already had dinner, but were glad to sit in for liqueurs and cigars. Tildesly's friend, Dr. Woods, now a Major in the medical service, was a white, downy man, with incongruously sharp eyes. He talked incessantly and interestingly, with quick, expressive gestures. Not until some moments had passed did Malleson suspect a deliberate motive in the man's loquacity. The clue came when he had watched Tildesly a bit.

There was something wrong with Tildesly. John had remembered him as a big, placid chap, with broad shoulders, a little muscle-bound, which fault had kept him among the second-string men. Nervousness was the last trait one would be likely to attribute to him. Yet ---to-night--- No, Malleson decided, it was not mere nervousness; nothing so simple as that.

A trio of Y.M.C.A. men entered and sat down at a nearby table. One of them nodded to Woods in friendly fashion.

"There's the Christers," growled Tildesly.

"Easy on them, Dick," protested the doctor. "One of those Christers, as you call them, has a mean machine-gun wound through the thigh. I know because I took care of him." The other did not answer. Malleson, watching closely, caught the queer notion that there was a mask over the fellow's face, a tenuous covering which gave to the broad countenance the effect of subtle emaciation.

Dr. Woods was in the midst of a discourse on the Y.M.C.A. He seemed to address his words impartially to both his companions.

"It's scarcely a fair test, I grant you, this religion in the trenches. You catch the poor devils when their guard is down. I mean the natural guard of ordinary safety, of confidence or assurance that a man's bound to have when his skin's in no visible danger. At such peaceful moments it's difficult to make words bore very deep, but . . ."

"Exactly," replied Malleson. "So that in reality, the appeal of religion is to fear, not to reason."

"Have you ever been afraid?" asked Tildesly, suddenly. He turned his eyes, wide and anxious, full upon John. The question was not a challenge; with some deep, insistent expectancy, he honestly wanted to know. Malleson was startled. It was as if a child, who had been hurt and could not understand, had come to him, asking why. Moreover he was vaguely troubled by the literal import of the question. It seemed to require of him the tribute of conscientious, searching introspection; it was a question to be answered strictly or not at all.

"No," he replied, at length. "Not, I believe, in the sense you mean. Scared, perhaps; or jarred off plumb temporarily by some startling and inexplicable occurrence, but that's panic. It's not lasting . . . . What do you mean, Dick?"

Tildesly frowned at the table awhile in silence, seeming to grope for the exact definition. Finally he shook his head and answered impatiently:

"It's beyond me. The nearest I can come is to say that I mean . . . horror---evil possession. That tells nothing, of course. But there's something of the feeling that you're being made sport of. It enrages you, but you can do nothing. You try laughing at yourself, or loud talk, but your, voice dies out. And you notice people staring . . . . "

"Dick!" Woods spoke sharply. Suddenly he laughed, with the senseless but contagious heartiness that competent actors can assume, and which by its very gustiness carries the sensibilities safely over abysses of worry and perplexity. He brought the conversation quickly to trivialities, in which John joined with the zest of a man who has just comprehended the purpose of the game.

For a time the filibuster succeeded. The doctor led the conversation to comment on the Paris theaters, the quality of the Folies Bergères as compared with the Follies, the latest thing at the Casino, and the outrageous but ludicrous bill at the Bataclan. It was the merest froth of discourse, that had for its sole object the distraction of a mind afraid of itself. Tildesly came out of his silence; his eyes lost their distant, questing look, and some inner tension seemed relieved. But the change could not last. Malleson had turned to reminiscence; yarns of college, arguments with umpires, this and that concerning the games of the Big Ten.

"The last time I was with you, Dick," he said, "was after the double-header at Northwestern, when you rescued me from an evening of ennui or post-mortems of the games by taking me to the theater. I think it was---what was the show? Don't recall. But I remember that after the performance I insisted on dragging you to a chop-suey joint where we got into a row with---"

"Sure thing!" exclaimed Tildesly, with animation. "It was that big 'Mandarin Palace' where the Chinks posted sentinels at the door in uniform---" He stopped. When he spoke again, the blasted look had returned to his face and his voice was unreasonably angry.

"That was long ago!" He seemed irritated over being led into some childish self-deceit.

Dr. Woods glanced at the watch on his wrist, and spoke briskly:

"Suppose you turn in, Dick. I'll smoke another cigar and then do the same. Leave the door between our rooms open a bit."

Tildesly rose obediently, watching the other's face. Malleson saw the doctor nod, reassuringly.

"Well-goodnight, Malleson. Awfully good to see you. I---I've been"---the big fellow hesitated, making a pathetic attempt to dig the correct and fatuous words of courtesy from his dark preoccupation-"not what you'd call lively company, I'm afraid, old man. But"---he managed a counterfeit smile, a mere grimace---"I've got to make up a bit of sleep. See you---again. Au revoir, Doc." He strode among the tables and vanished through the doorway, an out-of-place belligerence in the set of his broad shoulders. One would have been pardoned for surmising that the man was heading for trouble, instead of for his peaceful bed.

Finally Malleson broke the silence. "Well?"

Woods looked up quizzically, but did not reply. At the risk of being indelicate, John persisted. After all, the matter warranted explanation.

"Shell shock?"

The doctor shook his head. He took a cigar from his case, clipped it carefully, lighted it deliberately and puffed it to a healthy glow. His attitude now assumed what was probably its normal state, a relaxed and philosophic professionality. Malleson felt that whatever he planned to say would be worth waiting for, and that the initial inertia did not signify reluctance.

"No not exactly shell shock. In fact, not shell shock at all. Tildesly understated the case when he mentioned a bit of sleep to be made up. The man hasn't closed his eyes ten consecutive minutes for two nights."

John was silent, restraining his impatience, while the doctor puffed away, as if firing up for a race. At last he was off, full speed.

"No---not shell shock. Dreams. Not the ordinary amateur dreams that anybody can have, but a strictly private, unimaginable sort. The fellow has been through some ugly experiences at the Front, and one that was---well, indescribable. Now this experience was, so far as Tildesly is concerned, a visual affair. I mean, nothing touched him, physically. Yet I shouldn't say simply visual---there was smelling and hearing, too, but it's all the same. The point is that he was the passive, receptive onlooker. Had he been actively mixed up in the happening his senses would have been too busy to catch all the----let us say, emanations. As it was, he simply soaked them up. Well, they soaked far in ---and working like acid, somewhere back there in the mysterious recesses of the mind, etched a picture. You must understand this. This sort of dream is pictorial, literally a reënactment. It's reality itself. You will comprehend this fact when I tell you that five or six nights ago Tildesly awoke from his dream, vomiting.

"All that might be simple enough, though lacking in charm. But here's the rub. Not only is the dream pictorial, it's recurrent, and recurrent without an iota of change! So you see it's not surprising that a man comes to dread going to sleep."

"Well---what's the answer? Is Tildesly's case unique?"

"Oh, not at all. It's the typical battle-dream. We're just beginning to recognize it as a distinct phenomenon. The answer? I said the dream was recurrent without the slightest change. That's true for a period, often a considerable period. But gradually the obscure mechanism of the subconscious sets to work, and we get a merciful variation. Merciful, I mean, relatively speaking. Instead of acting over and over again the same intolerable occurrence, the dreamer is beset by monstrous symbolizations of his original horror. Often they are fabulous animals; I knew one chap who fought every night with a long-snouted, magenta-colored reptile that displayed an embarrassing partiality for his Adam's Apple---never attacked in any other spot. Now these transformations of the original dream approach our familiar nightmare---and that's no great matter, you know."

"You mean they gradually wear off?" asked Malleson.

"Very gradually---yes. The whole subject's most interesting. One explanation is that the battle-dream, with its pictorial realism, and its later transformation-stages is simply a regression, under shock, to a lower stage of mentality, infantile, or perhaps passed through long ages ago in the development of the race. Another is that---"

The doctor seemed about to deliver a discourse from which the personal element had largely departed, but John was in no mood for scientific speculation. The face of Dick Tildesly haunted him. He interrupted Woods with a hasty question:

''How can you help this fear of sleep? Physical exhaustion? A man can't carry on long in the shape Dick is in now."

"Oh, he'll weather it," replied the other, cheerfully. "But physical exhaustion isn't enough. I'll go upstairs and find him in bed, safe enough, but with the lights on. He'll have to swallow an opiate---that's all." The doctor stretched, glanced at the remaining half of his cigar, and settled himself comfortably. It was obvious that he, too, had been under some strain, and that he welcomed the opportunity for unguarded talk.

"I'll confess we're still bungling in our efforts to meet this difficulty," he mused. "The damned visions are so extraordinarily real. After a man has seen the same, unchanging atrocity for half a dozen nights or so he begins to believe it. It takes the place of his waking existence. If we doctors had some subjective data . . . I believe the nearest approach to this sort of dream that I ever had occurred in my kid days in medical school. I think I dreamed the same thing three times. Photographically accurate, too. But it passed. It was after I'd watched my first Caesarean. . . Suppose you never saw a Caesarean, Lieutenant? Spectacular, I assure you. Like a Druid sacrifice---especially so a few years ago, before surgeons began to pride themselves on small incisions . . . Really simple, though. It's the color-scheme, principally, that is effective; a study in whites and reds, unless, of course, the patient is a Negress, in which case you have a more complicated pattern. Woman on the table. A single, superficial slash, quite long. Then usually a breathing spell for the doctors and nurses; plenty of tune for chatting while the surface blood-vessels and tissue are being attended to. After that, though, quick work. When everybody is ready you slash again, drop the knife, ram your hand in blindly, grab the little chap as best you can and bring him out, yowling gloriously, through a regular flood. That's the spectacular part---that miraculous starting to life in a red wallow-well, you've heard the war bragged about as a bath of blood. . . . Pshaw! . . . Of course it's death, the finish---not the beginning."

The doctor rose, stifled a yawn, and smiled a bit, reminiscently. "This cursed, bloody war!"

THE permissionnaire train was nearing Baccarat. From the coaches came a subdued tumult, as if a monster of some sort, part tin, part leather, were threshing about in the darkness. The poilus, packed in the dark compartments, were collecting their equipment. Canteens---the sacred Pinard bidons, now largely empty after the long ride ---clattered on the board seats; belt buckles clicked, hobnails thumped the floor, paper rustled as fingers fumbled with awkward parcels containing chunks of Gruyère cheese or white bread, secured on leave, and now to be cherished as tidbits to sweeten the ration. Yawns, stretchings, mighty sighs of weariness and regret at the ending of the seven-days' furlough. The train rattled over a crosstrack and began to slacken speed. The soldiers, shaking off drowsiness, broke into chatter and good-humored imprecation.

"Eh là bas! Où est Savreux ?" . . . "Dis donc, mon vieux! As-tu ton quart?" . . . "Oo-la-la! Misère!" . . . "Savreux !---c'est un type!" . . . "Il est vaseux." ("Muddy"---that is, drunk.) . . . "Où est mon blockaus?" (helmet) . . . "J' m'en fous" . . . "Pierre ! Ta Rosalie." (bayonet) . . . "Prenez-prenez !" . . . "Encore la guerre" . . . "Nom de mille cochons!"

Malleson, kicking to start the circulation in his chilled legs, stared through the rain-spotted window at the black bulk of the station. Only a sliver of light showed, under the square of carpet that hung over the window of the station-master's office. A chill of dreariness, of resentment, touched him. Tossing his musette over his shoulder, he descended. The darkness was thick with breath, and short sturdy bodies, pushing insistently. Rain tinkled on the helmets crowding about him; soaked into his uniform, blew cold and refreshing against his face.

"No danger of avions to-night," he muttered. It was the stereotyped thought of all soldiers on rainy nights near the Front, but no sooner had it crossed his mind than Malleson felt vaguely irritated. Somehow during the last twenty-four hours he had become absurdly self-conscious about the whole inclusive matter of peril and fear. It was as if he were involuntarily standing guard against himself.

"Have you ever been afraid?"

The simple question poor Tildesly had uttered the night before reiterated itself with annoying persistency. And as if fastened to it by some hidden relevancy recurred the thought of Dave's coming.

He crossed the muddy street to the Hotel de la Gare, to warm himself with coffee before going on to the barracks, half a mile away. The café was crowded with poilus, talking, talking, pushing their faces close across the wine-stained tables. The heat from the cylindrical stove in the middle of the room brought out the odor of wet wool; the lights stared palely through the murk of tobacco smoke. Madame la patronne sat high and erect at the cash-box, black dress low on her big bosom, restless eyes glowing from a face like brown iron. At first sight of Madame, young American gentlemen looking for brothels invariably considered their search ended, and flopped down to drink a self-congratulatory glass, while they waited for the daughters of joy to appear. They never did, because Madame, in spite of her propitious looks, was respectable. She could see an empty glass or a five-franc note in the remotest corner of the room, and since neither object satisfied her sense of natural completeness, she immediately took the matter in charge. A majestic wave of her arm summoned her little daughter, Simone, from an inconspicuous corner behind the desk; a second gesture propelled Simone straight to the glass or the note. It was a curious thing to watch, this passage of the tiny cupbearer through that grizzled, stalwart throng. Simone was a ragged child of eight, with the preternatural calm of the Madonna in her big brown eyes. She threaded her way slowly among the tables, setting her worn shoes just so, and holding the glass high with serious, innocent hands. Many a soldier, looking up as she passed, caught his breath as at a miracle, and for a long moment afterward stared into himself and far away to a secret place where wine and war were not dreamed of. Simone brought to all the pure sadness which follows beauty that is young and lonely . . . And though Madame la patronne was a respectable woman, she was also shrewd.

She had another daughter, Jeanne, eighteen years old, who was a constant perplexity to those young American gentlemen aforesaid. By all the standards of their simple code Jeanne should have been their willing prey. She was comely, she was flirtatious, she spoke English, she had her habitat in a public bar-room, and even if all these qualifications had been lacking, she would still have possessed the all-transcending trade-mark---she was a Frenchwoman.

Consequently, when the girl refused to come to their arms, they could explain the phenomenon only on the sorrowful assumption that her mind must be slightly touched. Once so persuaded, they treated her with the same chivalrous consideration they would have manifested toward one of their own countrywomen afflicted by a like misfortune.

With a general salute to the company, after the French fashion, Malleson crossed to the dimly lighted dining-room, which served likewise as a lounging place for lower officers of the Division. A sofa occupied one corner, beyond the long table; a piano, piled high with sheet music, stood against the opposite wall. The place was deserted, but at sound of Malleson's step Jeanne popped her head in from the kitchen doorway, bobbed brightly, and disappeared to brew the coffee---a special pot, freshly made, for the handsome Lieutenant who was always so gentil. She reappeared soon, with the steaming glass. Finding Malleson disinclined to talk, Jeanne sat down at the piano and began playing softly. Though she was capable of pounding out the most syncopated of American jazz, to-night her fingers wandered lightly, drawing from the keys the tender melancholy of the old native love songs which are so much like lullabies; which, in their simplicity, are lullabies to the fantastic, sophisticated Gallic soul.

An occasional gust of rainy wind shook the boarded windows; burring voices and the clink of glasses sounded from the café; pans rattled in the kitchen, but through it all, softly insistent, the music tinkled, sobbed and danced. The girl swayed lyrically, dim light seeping about her yellow hair. Now and then her heavy white arms rose high, balanced, and pounced viciously, tearing out harsh chords that instantly rippled away into languor, like passion sharply curbed. For half an hour Malleson, queerly at odds with himself, listened and watched. The girl and her music were like a forbidden narcotic.

"Stop it, Jeanne!" he cried at last, irritably. "I like it, and it's pretty, but it makes me soft---like a woman, you know."

He smiled, as she turned her face of a voluptuous doll.

"Ah, you Americans," she sighed, "that's what you need. Always hard! Why don't you ever want to dream? Écoutez, mon ami! Don't you know the Frenchman is so great a lover because he is half woman?"

"So great a fighter, too, à cause de cela, I suppose," he mused . . . But the love can wait. The fighting can't."

"True," she answered, sadly. Then, quickly, "You have just come from permission? À Paris?"

He nodded.

"Call it a permission if you please. Three days."

"Ah---but three days à Paris! Dieu! ... Then you have heard? The Wolves will make an attack---un coup de main ---to-morrow?"

"Eh?" Instantly Malleson was alert. "How do you know?"

"Oh, I have friends, you know, who tell me things. That nice little captain, par exemple, who dines here each evening. . .

SINCE Thanksgiving the Section had been attached to the 128th French Division, long before named by the Germans themselves The Wolves of Priest's Woods, in honor of a certain unpleasantness which had taken place in that same Bois le Prêtre. For the greater part of the winter the Baccarat sector had lain fallow, germinating trouble. By one of those tacit compacts common during the cold months Germans and French had agreed to let each other alone, except for a few shells sent over for courtesy's sake. Little damage was done. A direct hit upon one of the French postes brought grunts of surprised disapproval from the brancardiers within. These postes had been fitted out for warm sleeping and good eating, and for Fritz so far to forget himself as to endanger not only their lives but their cuisine struck the poilus as cursed bad form. After a few saucy replies from the 75's the faux pas was commonly forgiven.

However, upon his arrival at the barracks, Malleson found Jeanne's rumor true. The Wolves were to launch a small attack, to secure prisoners for information purposes. After roll-call the next morning the Lieutenant gave the men their general instructions. What each driver would do in detail, during action, lay with the driver himself. His conscience was his commander; if he chose to shirk there was no one to hinder, and if he himself fell there was no one to help.

"This coup is nothing to get excited over," declared John. in conclusion, "but be prepared for a fairly long stretch of calls. The barrage begins at six-thirty this evening; the men go over the top at eight. Watch for gas at St. Pole and St. Maurice---have your Tissot masks ready as well as the little ones. I'll try to get to all the postes before the party is over."

By seven o'clock the French guns were pounding monotonously from their hiding places in the woods near Village Nègre, and from the entrenchments along the Migneville road. Occasionally a battery of 105's farther back joined in with its deeper roar. The shells rustled and whined over St. Pole, the sound dying to a momentary hush that was broken by dull reverberations far off in the German wire. When the Boche replied, the voice of the shell was a crescendo scream that ended in a vicious, flatted crash, like the noise of a dozen heavy boards dropped together.

It was dark when Malleson drove his "staff car," a khaki-colored Ford, into the farmyard at St. Pole. He had completed a rapid tour of the postes without mishap. The Germans were firing in a deliberate way, apparently aiming at the batteries rather than at the roads. The night was cold and clear. Malleson could make out the black hulk of the barn. Two weeks before, a shell had shattered the end of the building, so that now against the sky its bold roof-line broke and sagged. Beyond the barn was a rough paddock, which sloped to the woods, about one hundred yards from the road. A battery of 75's was hidden among the trees. The guns had fired only once, but apparently the Germans suspected their presence, for at regular three-minute intervals a shell whined and clattered in the vicinity of the battery.

"Still safe enough," muttered Malleson, "but if they shift the range much to the right that battery won't talk when it should." He knew that the 75's, which had been moved into place the night before, were to take part in the intenser barrage which would be unleashed just before the men went ever the top.

The luminous dial of his wrist-watch showed ten minutes to seven. He draped a blanket over the radiator of his car and walked toward the "cave," which was the buttressed first floor of the stone farmhouse. Fifty feet from the entrance two ambulances were parked, side by side. Three had been assigned to the poste; evidently one driver had already gone on call. Malleson touched the radiators, and nodded in satisfied fashion. His men were attending to business. It was necessary to run the engines frequently, during waits, to keep them warm and ready. The oil which the French supplied was too heavy for the Fords. Once it cooled on the pistons and bearings there was trouble. The driver might have to crank for fifteen minutes, or perhaps even jack a rear wheel off the ground before the engine would show the slightest enthusiasm. And fifteen minutes could be embarrassingly rich in possibilities.

The "cave" was a large, low room, lighted by candles in wine bottles, placed at intervals on a long board table. A muddy brown blanket was nailed over the window. Half a dozen folded litters stood against the wall by the door. On the table were Pinard bidons, with their covering of worn blue cloth, three empty sardine cans, half a boule of hard bread, and a large, grease-encrusted kettle, from which the evening potage had been served. Over a small charcoal fire on the hearth simmered a pot of black coffee, flavored with rum and sugar.

The room was hot and stifling, with the mingled odors of candlewick, tobacco smoke, and sweaty clothing. A Frenchman asleep on a stretcher snored raspingly, his worn, stubby shoes extended pathetically. Two others were admiring a set of post cards which a third, just returned from permission, had brought back from Paris. A thin old corporal, blouse off, was hard at work near one of the candles, etching a flamboyant design on the brass casing of a 75, to be sold as a souvenir vase. One of the Americans, a boy of eighteen, watched him absorbedly. The other, Nolan, a slow, powerful youth, looked up from scribbling in his diary. His wind-bitten face, ruddy from the heat of the stove, glowed round and big above his white throat, from which the collar had been folded back. The Frenchmen turned respectfully toward the Lieutenant; the corporal ceased his filing, then seeing no orders were forthcoming, resumed his activities. The snorer rasped on. Nolan moved quickly to Malleson's side.

"Bill Swazey left for St. Maurice nearly an hour ago, Lieutenant," he reported. "A call for some gas cases. Maybe we ought to be getting anxious. He has to pass here, you know, and it's only four kilometers."

Five minutes later John was in his car again, headed for St. Maurice. The road, deeply pock-marked with shell holes, was easy to follow until it entered a stretch of woods. Here Malleson throttled the engine down, and leaning forward, trusted to the sixth sense that guides the ambulance driver through the dark. The Ford crept along, bouncing, creaking, slithering on the edge of the ditch, but crawling steadily. Shells were crashing a hundred yards to the right. An occasional bluish flicker darted among the trees and left the night darker than before. Half way through the woods John instinctively jammed his foot on the brake. A nervous voice cried:

"Halte! Qui va...?"

"S. S. U.---pour le poste à St. Maurice!" Malleson shouted.

An electric flash played upon him and instantly disappeared. The sentry, his words muffled now, spoke a foot from John's ear.

"Passez. Mais---le gaz. Écoute!"

Above the whir of the engine sounded an intermittent rippling among the trees-the treacherous silken plopping of the gas shells. With a word of thanks to the Frenchman, Malleson pushed the pedal to low speed and crept on. A hundred feet farther on he caught the sweetish, citron-like odor and clapped his mask into place. It made driving harder, but he dared not risk a full breath of the poison. His eyes already smarted a bit, and he could feel a slight irritation at his nostrils and the corners of his mouth.

He began to worry about Swazey. The latter was older than Malleson and there could be no question of his courage, but his capacity for original thought was limited. He was not one of the charter members of the Section, and nobody knew what his status had been before the war. During "sessions," when Pinard flowed freely, he had been known to take his pipe from between his discolored teeth, and launch into reminiscences in which strange, gangster epithets abounded. The episodes possessed a fascinating blackguardism of which Swazey seemed not to be conscious. But he rarely finished a story, even when drunk. Somewhere in its course he became nervous, as if afraid of revealing too much. Any number of these intriguing fabrics of Swazey's memory or imagination were waiting to be completed. The grinning, ugly little driver was never ill-humored. His repartee lacked the ductile, insinuating cunning of the college-bred "kidders," but was vigorous and picturesquely obscene. Indeed, he made obscenity almost a religion. His stock of anecdotes would have interested St. Anthony. In the inside pocket of his blouse reposed a soiled envelope which contained several postcard photographs. None but Swazey ever got a glimpse of them. Many of the poilus considered pictures of naked women an indispensable part of their equipment, doubtless as reminders of civilization. Informal salons were held at which an unemotional critic might have been pardoned for wondering if landscapes had gone out of style. Swazey viewed these exhibits with complacency, but declared the works uninspired.

"Now if I showed you birds these!" he would ejaculate. But he never showed them.

Fifty yards from the edge of the woods the car stopped with a jolt that threw Malleson against the wheel. The engine sputtered and died. A nine inch tree, blasted by a shell, had fallen across the road. Leaving the ambulance John walked toward the patch of gray that marked the clearing, and the outskirts of the village. Once in the open his pace quickened to a trot. The mask made breathing difficult. He cautiously raised it, found the gas faint, and slipped the apparatus to the "alert" position at his chest. As he crossed a little stone bridge the air above quivered and shrieked. Malleson dropped fiat on his stomach as the shell exploded in the mud beneath the bridge, jarring the masonry and bruising his ear-drums. Thirty seconds later he dropped again, waited for the crash, rose, and instantly flattened for the third time, pressing tight against the cold pavement as the high explosive toppled a fragment of wall from a mined building farther down the street.

"Damn!" he muttered, "getting frequent." His head sang with the concussions and his nostrils smarted from the piercing odor of burnt acids.

The poste was in the basement of the shattered church. Swazey's car, apparently intact, stood by the door. Malleson felt a momentary suspicion. Had Swazey's nerve failed him? The shelling was lively . . . . But the code of the ambulance man said "Bring back the wounded. . ."

As Malleson started down the steps, an inhuman howl, like the cry of a wounded horse, brought him to a dead stop. Fear of the shells was clean and wholesome beside the revulsion that stirred him like nausea. Again came the agonized scream, long drawn and desperate, dwindling to a thin whinney. By a decided effort of will, he pushed open the heavy door and entered.

The room was full of prostrate poilus, but John saw clearly only the inverted face of a Frenchman who was stretched on his back across a narrow table, his head toward the door. The face was like green putty, the mouth a dripping black oval. Swazey was straddling the man's chest, pressing his shoulders to the table, as a victorious wrestler holds his opponent. At the far end of the table, his unshaven countenance grotesquely set, a stretcher-bearer bore with his full weight on the poilu's left leg. A French officer, bare-headed and with shirt sleeves rolled back from stained arms, was cutting off the sufferer's foot.

The screaming had ceased; the man was unconscious. The warm, sticky odor of blood hung in the air; the officer grunted over his work; the sickening burr of the saw on the bone seemed to fill every corner of the room, though a dozen gassed poilus were moaning on their stretchers.

As Malleson approached, Swazey looked up and nodded.

"See why I'm late, Loot," he said. "Been helpin' the doctor here."

"Right, of course, Bill," replied John in a low voice.

"It's been enough to puke a buzzard," went on Swazey cheerfully, "but I guess we're about through. Got it off, Cap?" he queried, peering over his shoulder at the officer, who turned, wiping his hands on a piece of gauze.

"Quite, sir," replied the latter gravely, in English. Then, to Malleson:

"Good evening, Lieutenant. You see . . ."

He spread his hands expressively, to take in the entire room; evidently the man on the table was only an incident. John was surprised to recognize in this soiled and weary surgeon Jeanne's dapper "little captain" who dined each evening at the Hotel de la Gare.

They laid the still unconscious poilu on a stretcher, and Swazey placed a rolled-up blanket under the huge white knob where the foot had been.

It was unfortunate that one had to cut without an anesthetic," said the Captain, in his precise English, "but it was nécessaire. Gas in the wound, you know---but also gas in his throat. As it is, he has a chance---one, poor chance." A sudden, hard anger sounded in his voice.

'What can we do here?" asked Malleson. "We will need ---let's see-four cars for the couchés. Or can some of these men sit up?"

'But certainly," responded the officer. He glanced rapidly over the litters. "Five---no, six-can sit up. There remain ... five who must go couché."

''There---in the corner?" questioned Malleson, dropping his voice. The Captain shook his head, and laid a hand on John's arm.

"Useless," he answered, sadly. "He is going, le pauvre, but he will need no ambulance." His tone became professional again.

"He caught too much. The shell must have been very near. The gas fills him; he will die soon. Meanwhile, a little opiate, you see, and the cars for men who can fight again."

Gazing down at the figure in the corner, Malleson felt something of the profound and holy anger that had betrayed itself a moment before in the Captain's voice. It was intolerable to think that man could do this to man. The victim seemed mutely to express something of this same bewilderment. In the anguished ridges of the blistered forehead amazement competed with fathomless suffering. The blind eyes bulged the lids into crimson globes from which thick moisture seeped; the liver-colored lips, negroid with swelling, stretched wide to suck in each difficult breath. It was impossible to tell whether the man was conscious; his only sound was the raucous moan of the air, passing the great blisters which were forming in his throat.

Malleson straightened up and addressed the Captain:

"How does it happen that all these men were caught so badly? Didn't they have masks?"

The Frenchman tossed his hands above his head and ejaculated fiercely:

"Nom de Dieu! How does it happen! How does anything about this cursed war happen? How does it happen that I, a peaceful surgeon of Grenoble, am here in this abattoir cutting off feet without giving anesthetics!" He suddenly checked himself. "Your pardon, Lieutenant," he murmured, smiling wearily.

Three of the stretcher-patients were loaded into Swazey's car, and the lone brancardier assigned to the orderly's place on the front seat. His aid would be needed in removing the tree from the road. Malleson clung to the running-board.

The shelling had ceased. A few minutes of vigorous action with the short saw which the car carried enabled the three to roll the log aside.

"Go on, Swazey," directed Malleson; "give the word at St. Pole that another car is needed here for the couchés. I'll go back and bring in the assis in the staff-car. Return to St. Pote from the HOE." (evacuation hospital).

"Ay, ay, sir," responded Swazey. The brancardier returned with Malleson to the poste.

Holding hands like children, the blinded poilus stumbled up the steps. The last was seized with a spasm of retching as he rose from his stretcher. Awkward in his blindness, he failed to reach the door, and vomited on the floor. His thickened lips mumbled a humble apology.

"N'importe, mon vieux!" cried the Captain cheerily. "Bonne chance, tout le monde !"

"Bonne ... chance . . . mon . . . capitaine," came the quavering answer.

As John passed the St. Pole poste the battery below the paddock was spatting merrily. The men would go over the top in the next few minutes.

It was not until nearly midnight that Malleson, in his rounds, again reached the basement of the church at St. Maurice. Except at Village Nègre there had been few wounded. Eight of the cars had concentrated at that point, and by eleven o'clock had cleared the station. Matthews, of the Section, had a splintered forearm that would necessitate his evacuation to the base hospital; two of the ambulances were hopeless wrecks. Absolutely considered, this was bad fortune; circumstantially, it came under the heading of moderately good luck. Rumor---to be corroborated next morning by an exhibit in the town square of Baccarat ---said that forty-seven Boche prisoners had been bagged.

Weary from the strain of much driving in the dark Malleson blundered down the steps of the St. Maurice poste. Exhausted brancardiers were drowsing on their stretchers. The Captain slouched in the one chair, his arms hanging limply, his head sunk on his chest. John thought him asleep until he beckoned, without raising his head. Then the Lieutenant saw that the Frenchman's eyes were fixed on the litter in the corner.

"Still alive?" whispered Malleson, pityingly.

The other nodded. "He will go soon, and---it will not be pretty. I advise you to get in your car and go back. There will be no more calls to-night."

Bitterness ran through the Captain's words. To keep human beings from dying was the clearly understood object of a game in which the odds, too, were calculable---in peace times. Now, however, by no consent of his own, the odds had been changed. Up to a certain point his skill availed, as of old; beyond that point his efforts became absurd. It was a subject for deep chagrin.

But he had warned Malleson too late. A dreadful sound rose from the corner.

"Can't we do something?" shouted the Lieutenant.

The Captain shook his head.

It was over in a minute. The blisters had met.

They laid a blanket over the strangled poilu, covering the bleeding face, from which the lower lip had been torn by his last spasmodic clawing.

"Mon ami," said the Captain, accompanying Malleson to the door, "when your children are preparing to go to the next war, remember this, and make them embusqués--- make them slackers."

MALLES0N had expected Dave to join the Section almost immediately. He was beginning to wonder over the boy's non-appearance when he received word that Dave had contracted "flu" and would be held at Paris until he completely recovered. John was conscious of a faint relief, which he did not stop to analyze.

The warmth of spring stole into the air, softening the soil in brown patches on the slopes of the Vosges, and drawing from the rocks big, hanging drops that glistened in the sunlight. The streets of Baccarat grew deep with slush, churned to a dirty gray by the truck-wheels. At noon the poilus discarded their coats and loitered about the soup-kitchens, their red hands half concealed in trousers pockets. The regimental band of the "169th" gave concerts near the Hotel de la Meurthe, each player keeping time with extended foot, and flourishing his trumpet with fine gusto. The little General of the Division, plainly clad and easily mistakable for a sous-officier until one saw the silver star on his collar, stood with his staff officers on the curb, and applauded the vaunting music.

In the early years of the war the townspeople had naïvely welcomed spring as the traditional birth-season of hope. That illusion had passed. So effectually had the ingenuity of man reversed the benevolent intentions of nature that the swelling of the tulip bulbs or the hopping of the early robins brought thoughts of death. Unhappily linked with these new-born, innocent things was that different thing, the "spring drive."

Already rumors abounded. Suddenly they drew to a focus on one ominous, indubitable fact---far to the north the Germans had struck with shattering force, and were hacking their way toward Amiens; toward the Channel ports upon which depended the vital supplies of the British army.

By all the principles of heroic drama, the Wolves should have raced northward to the breach. Instead they moved to several microscopic villages a few kilometers from Baccarat, beyond the range of the guns. The apparently inscrutable logic of war was again in reality simple; the homely expedient of the breathing spell, or, as the pessimists put it, the poorly disguised fattening for the slaughter.

The Section took quarters in a huge, airy barn in Darien, the most tranquil of caravanserais. The torpor of the village was so phenomenal as to be almost exciting. The languor of its eternal afternoon yielded only to the indigenous voices of the pigs, cows, and chickens that strayed about its single street, and at will entered its houses. Here, as everywhere, the inhabitants were old or crippled, or both. The most strenuous activity visible to the wondering eyes of the Americans was the deliberate motions of an old peasant woman who sat in the sun by the barn door, weaving baskets from ghastly white reeds. She was like a figure from provincial legend; undoubtedly she had sat there for centuries, and would remain through all futurity.

In the dead calm of the next few days Malleson had an opportunity to think. His musing centered about a single point. Why had the thought of Dave's coming hovered annoyingly on the fringe of his consciousness since he first heard the news at Paris? Well, Dave might get killed. A simple answer. Too simple. He confessed to himself that his uneasiness touched Dave only secondarily. With slow surprise Malleson saw to what a crystallization many old nebulous memories, many half-understood theories, had hardened under the pressure of responsibility. Given the clue, he could retrace his way through the cocksure philosophy of his college days, the tingling egoism of adolescence, back to that fascinating shibboleth of his father's---"Don't look for help. You won't get it." The formula had stuck---perhaps because it made fine mouthing for a young fellow who hadn't been called to account. But in these days when so many accounts were being abruptly closed . . . Malleson thought of his mother. Was it fanciful, he wondered, to imagine Dave in the rôle of a messenger from her? A messenger with a faith so simple, so undramatic, as to challenge his own? Fanciful or not, the idea persisted.

But it was only pleasure he felt when, from his "office" in the house opposite the barracks, he heard Dave's shy voice put a question in hesitant French to the old basketweaver. As Malleson met him at the door the boy's eyes lighted with their old devoted look, but he saluted carefully, and stood at attention. The contrast between the absurd puppet-rigidity of his posture and the expression in his thin, eager face sent a queer jab to the Lieutenant's heart. The same little Dave, trying so desperately to do as he had been told!

"I walked out from Baccarat," explained Dave, when they were seated in the office. "They told me to wait over till you could send a car for me, but I thought I'd not bother you. It isn't very far, but Gee! I'm hot!" He started to loosen his blouse, then hesitated.

"Take it off, Dave. I'm not strict, you know."

Dave sighed in relief, and unbuttoned his collar. His light hair was damp, and a crimson line crossed his white forehead where the over-seas cap had pinched. Dust grayed the heavy shoes below the ill-matched leggings, which had been rolled with meticulous care.

The members of the Section welcomed the boy heartily noon mess, as he took his place in line.

"Still regulation, ain't you?" chuckled Swazey, pointing to Dave's plate and oval cup. "You'll lose 'em or chuck 'em before fore you've been here long. We all do."

"It wouldn't hurt us if we did stick closer to regulation---especially you, Bill," declared Sergeant Douglas, gazing with distaste upon the untidy Swazey, who was flourishing a big blue china mug.

"I was born rowdy, Sarge," grinned Swazey, "and I ain't been at the Front long enough to git refined."

John was eager to hear the news of home. He had had frequent letters from his mother; what she wrote would always be the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth. His father's messages, infrequent and short, cheered him and at times puzzled him. They were impersonal, for the most part, though occasionally concerned with the war reactions of people at home, especially his friends, or Emma and himself.

"Your mother thanks God you're in the ambulance service," he wrote, "partly because she thinks it's not so dangerous, and partly because she is glad you're not killing people. Well, on the whole, so am I. Still, if some night you'd walk in your sleep, slip the Red Cross from your arm and slit a weasand, I'll not disown you. Life is cheap." Then, in a postscript whose seeming irrelevance puzzled John until he glanced over the letter again his father had scrawled, "Not your life, boy. Hoe the row first."

No letter had come from Mattie for six weeks. Malleson had written four times, in a scale of expression that began with anxiety and ended in curt indifference.

In the afternoon, while the sun was still high, John and Dave set out across the fields toward an old ruined château, whose early master had been the great man of the district. The people of the village told a dramatic tale of the castle's latest fate. At the outbreak of the war the owner was a captain of artillery. In the first days of attack the Germans took possession, and the château became the headquarters for certain high German officers. At length the French guns were brought up, and by a piece of cruel irony the captain who owned the château held command. His duty was a hard one. Knowing every nook and corner of the place and loving it all with a love rooted far in the past, he trained his cannon on his ancestral home and shattered it to bits. But with it went certain high German officers.

The forest, which surrounded the grounds, grew less dense as they approached the edifice itself, and about seventy yards from the walls gave place to a gently sloping lawn, intersected by paths and dotted with flower-beds now overgrown with weeds. The sward, which must once have been beautiful, showed, like all else, its hideous disfigurements. Everywhere, breaking the green, deep brown pits with blurred edges marked where the shells had plowed. In some of the shell-craters seeds had fallen and sprouted. Here and there purple films of violets hid the loam.

Sudden life, sudden loveliness blossomed in stranger places than this in the war zone. The scent of lilacs floated over carrion, or that literal miracle, bird-song, trilled above the crashing of the shells. Indeed, so frequently did these things happen that many a soldier had built the deepest faith of his soul upon them, as the imperishable signs of a vaster life than any which man could destroy.

Approach to the château led through an avenue of stately trees. Venerable trunks showed ugly scars; a few were split and twisted to grotesqueness, the sight of which was as painful as the sight of human deformity. High overhead, among the small branches, sounded an incessant whispering, as if shocked and cautious voices were breathing to each other the unforgettable tale of disaster.

Of the building itself nothing remained save broken walls, enclosing shapeless heaps of débris, with tender green grass blades sprouting from the mold. Parts of the corner towers still lifted their jagged turrets above the ruins, gray sentinels of desolation.

John and Dave stood silently for a while in a breach of the walls, alike affected by the melancholy of the place. The boy had brought a camera, which he now unslung.

"I got it in Paris," he confessed. "I know they're forbidden. What do---"

"Go ahead," smiled Malleson. "You know I'm a rotten officer."

Dave peered into the finder, moved the camera this way and that, and finally looked up, the picture untaken.

"Somehow it seems indelicate," he declared, "a---a sort of sacrilege. We are so new, we Americans, and this machine is such a clap-trap, tourist contrivance, here where everything has suffered so much . .........."

Malleson watched the boy with growing surprise. The sentiment was at once the most fanciful and the most mature he had ever heard Dave express.

"I know," he replied slowly. "In other situations I've felt the same. But it grows out of one---worse luck! I'd snap the picture. You can take it home when the war's over."

The shutter clicked.

"I've got to get over being soft, I guess," remarked Dave.

They sat down at the base of a turret, where the sun had warmed the stone. Rank grass crept to the foot of the wall; its blades waved in the light like the Lilliputian swords of a tiny but inexorable army come to reclaim. Dave sat upright, clasping his knee!, gazing across the slope to the woodland, where the light green ran into the purple shadows of the trunks. Malleson noted the deepened maturity of the boy's face; how the cheeks had hardened, and the lips become certain. He remembered the queer, pinched look about the nostrils that Dave, when small, assumed in his effort not to whimper. A ghost of the expression remained; it was as if the will had at last got the upper hand and put its stamp of victory there to stay. Yet John knew that his fosterbrother's heart was still shy and lonely. He wondered how deeply Dave felt the shadow of his birth---the sort of shadow that might mean little to a boy, but must appear more and more somber as the boy grew older.

Puffing his pipe, Malleson waited. Curious to see what bit of news would be put first, he felt a certain satisfaction when Dave seemed to read his secret wish.

"Your father"---the boy had never managed to forget the "your"---"came to see me at Allentown just before we were sent to the ship. Gee! I was surprised. I couldn't get more than two days' leave, and the trip home would have been too long. When he came one evening with my Lieutenant to the quarters I was just in the midst of a good-bye letter to Mother, and was pretty blue. I didn't know, of course, that I'd get assigned to your unit or I'd not have worried. . ."

"Was Dad well?" asked Malleson. "And Mother?" He remembered that he himself had had to leave Allentown without seeing any one from home.

After a silence Dave answered slowly:

"Yes, I think he was, then. You know how hard it is to tell anything about him. A couple of months before, just as I was leaving for camp, he had one of those queer spells---you remember that night at the farm three or four years ago ?"

John nodded. He remembered it for several reasons. And for an instant his thoughts flew to Mattie . . . . Dave continued: "It was something like that, but old Doctor Walters made him stay in bed for almost a week."

"And Mother?"

"She was well, and just the same as ever." Again the boy gazed off into the distance. "She had packed a little box for me to take along---a new fountain-pen, and a flashlight, and a pair of wonderful fur-lined gloves. There's a pair for you too; I've got them in my barracks-bag."

Malleson's pipe had gone out and he forgot to light it. A dull ache crept in his throat. When Dave spoke again it was with a slight, embarrassed hesitancy.

"There was another thing---or two things. Just as he was leaving, your father gave me a little leather-backed Testament, and one for you. Mother had sent them too. He said something I didn't understand; I guess I can remember the exact words, they puzzled me so. He said 'Mother is a mistress of irony, isn't she, Dave? And I'm a faithful messenger.' He told me to be sure you got your Bible. And before I could answer he'd jumped on the train. . . A couple of nights later we were hustled into dark cars and brought to Hoboken. We sailed the next day . . . I’ve--- I've got your Bible in my bag, too."

The ache in Malleson's throat had grown sharp. He did not try to explain the words that had puzzled the boy. They were no puzzle to him. . . Suddenly he felt very, very sorry for his mother, and, at the same time, near to her. He could not recall feeling so since the night, years before, when he had brought his overcoat from The Thing that Lifts Up and laid it by the trunk that she was packing---the night before he started to college.

And again---Mattie. That night he had had a ridiculous quarrel with her. But it had ended happily. Now. . .

'What about my old girl, Mattie ?" he asked abruptly, drawing a perverse satisfaction from the coarse flippancy of his words.

Dave chuckled.

"Oh, I've got a message from her, too---a letter. It's pinned in the pocket of my blouse, down at the barracks." He became serious again: "She was working awfully hard. Red Cross. She wanted to go to a regular nurses' training camp, but she couldn't leave her mother. All that'll be in the letter, I guess. She used to come in nearly every evening to see Mother. They'd both be dead tired, for Mother too was doing a lot of unofficial bandage-making and so forth, besides keeping the house going. Mattie could never stay long, but they'd sit together a little there in the library. Often they'd have your letters, and would try to figure out where you were. They laughed, but when Mattie had gone Mother would sit there by herself, often for an hour, before she went up to bed. I---sometimes I went in then. She'd seem glad, but of course I was a darn poor substitute for you!" He laughed awkwardly.

"Where was Dad?" asked Malleson, in a low voice.

"Oh, he was there, often---but, well---I don't know . . Dave hesitated, then went on impetuously:

"He joked so much!"

"About me? About the war?"

"About everything!"

That night when Malleson opened the letter that Dave had brought he found that the envelope had been made bulky by half a dozen snap-shots which the girl had enclosed. The letter itself was cheerful enough, though he fancied the handwriting betrayed strain or weariness.

"DEAR JOHN:

"Your Mother says that what you'd most want to hear about is me and my doings, but both seem insignificant. I'm still working on the Journal, but Mr. Reynolds has fixed it so that I can leave at three each day and go to the Red Cross rooms. We make bandages, pack gift-bags for the soldiers, and whenever a troop-train stops here long enough we pass out chocolate and fruit. But most of the time we're at the Red Cross rooms. I stay till seven each evening, and sometimes go back after dinner. Doesn't that sound like terrible hardship to a man at the Front? . . . Lover, where are you? That's the most worrysome question---and of course I know you're not allowed to tell.

"Your Mother is well. My Mother isn't---very---and it worries me, but there's no help for it. John, will you believe it, she is secretly pining, after all these years, for Father to come back. He never will---and I wouldn't speak to him if he did!

"Of course you remember Harry Cameron---the fellow who bored you so? He enlisted, and I've just heard that he's been badly wounded. Wouldn't it be strange if one of your ambulances had brought him? Oh, I forgot that you're with the French. . . We get to thinking such crazy, impossible things here! One of the things I always wonder, when I'm making a bandage, is if it'll be the very one you'll get, if you're hit. And then I'm both anxious to send it and afraid to let it go.

"These pictures make me look gawky, but I don't believe l'm really that thin. Your Mother took them, so Ill blame it on her---she must have held the kodak wrong somehow. At any rate you'll appreciate the background---your own place. See that very snowy one---recognize the grape-arbor? Do you remember how we used to hide there when we played 'Run-Sheep-Run'? You and I always managed to fool Toad Dollivan and his side and sneak up near the goal---the old catalpa tree . . . Well, the big tree's still there, but not even a sparrow could hide in the arbor now, it's so bare.

"I tried to get your Mother to let me take some pictures of her to send, but she absolutely refused. She said you had trials enough--- what you wanted was a picture of your girl, not of an old woman. Isn't that absurd! But she said it in such a queer way . . . . You must write to her often, dear. And am I still your girl? Sometimes I get scared. . .

"MATTIE."

Malleson turned back to the first page and glanced at the date-line. Five months ago. Well, in five months. . .

The chill of midnight was in the air when he finally blew out the candle and climbed into bed.

APRIL passed, and the langour of May fell over the Bazien fields. The air lost its last touches of chill and became heavy and fragrant. Day after day the sun burned its way across a sky blue as turquoise and flecked with evanescent white clouds that twisted and dissolved and reappeared, drifting monotonously, and at sun-down taking on a flaming glory, fierce and brief. If one listened intently he would gradually lose the sense of utter stillness and begin to detect one by one the myriad delicate voices of summer, blending, vibrating, until the silence burst into life and hummed against his ears. Often, during those days, this natural orchestration was interrupted by another sound, really overhead, but seeming to fill the air. If the droning was steady, well and good; if it rose and fell in rhythmic pulsations, one looked for shrapnel-proof shelter, for the plane was Boche. Then soft ploppings would be heard, and, as if by magic, puffs of smoke would appear against the blue---white cotton-puffs from the anti-aircraft 75's and black wool from the 105's. Only experience could persuade one that danger attended those downy arabesques. Dave was fascinated by them, and had to he reminded, by the most cold-blooded, unesthetic of explanations, that what goes up, even with the best intentions, must come down again.

Lapped in the tranquillity of the place the men were growing fat. Butter, eggs and fresh milk could he had in the village---and were had. The mess-sergeant made frequent trips to Baccarat for luxuries, chief among them "honest-to-Gawd" meat, as Swazey called it, to supplement the "bidoche" ration issued by the French.

The cars were in perfect order; the kitchen-trailer, known because of its preëminent importance as the Ark of the Covenant, had had a fresh coat of paint; the personal equipment of the men had been ruthlessly cut down to "regulation." The mud-hole at the entrance to the village had dried, and its bottom lay caked and cracking in the heat; beyond it the road stretched white and seductive by day, gray and mystical by moonlight---the road north. And gradually, in their sloth and safety, the men grew profanely restless.

With the Wolves it was otherwise. Quartered in nearby villages, drinking their Pinard, foraging among the hencoops, polishing their rifles, arguing over battle and mistresses and life, scouring their worn shirts for vermin, puffing their poor cigarettes, they opened their minds at reveille as they opened their eyes, and at taps closed them again, knowing it the better way. It was no lack of spirit, no poverty of imagination; it was the war-created defense against self, and the too-sweet face of illusion. For the Wolves too saw the road north.

What lay at the end of that road even the strategists hesitated to say. For the last six weeks the news that had filtered down into Lorraine, whether by verbal report or the dubious communiqués in the papers, had been a tale of tragic disaster, not in the least mitigated by the overtones of hysterical optimism. Yet, absolutely considered, the tragedy lay only in irremediable human loss, for from the military point of view victory was with the Allies. Not the first celestial paradox of the war. At any rate, as the histories were to recount, between March 21 and April 5 the British and French armies, facing overwhelming odds, first reeled back, then painfully caught their breath, and finally, digging toes in, brought to a halt the most tremendous offensive in the history of the world. Four times as many divisions had been hurled against the British in March 1918 as against Verdun two years before. But as yet there had been little time for comparisons. After a respite of a few days the Germans struck again, this time along and across the Lys. Again they swept on, turned north, passed over Messines Ridge, stormed up the isolated height of Mt. Kemmel and again were checked, beaten in the valleys that separate it from the Scherpenberg.

Names---Robecq, Wytschaete, Nieppe, Bailleul, Meteren, Kemmel, Dickebusche, Givenchy---names, many of them unlovely and unloved, a few of them beautiful, and all of them bloody, came down on the news from the north. To the Wolves and the men of the Section they were like oaths or endearments to be sprinkled on the conversation, which concerned one mighty prophecy---Germany would strike again. And one mighty question---Where?

Meanwhile Dave, industrious among the indolent crew at Bazien, spent many hours tinkering over the ambulance which Malleson had assigned to him. His training at Allentown had included practice at management of a car, under conditions as nearly as possible similar to those his instructors imagined he would find at the Front. But the program had been largely hypothesis. Swazey, who curiously enough had appointed himself Dave's tutor, pointed out several obvious misconceptions.

"I know them rules," he declared scornfully. "I had to listen to 'em too. First place, they always counted on you havin' a orderly with you. Well, nine times out of ten you won't. Your orderly's usually a wounded Frog, who can just sit up. So don't count on any help if you drop in a shell-hole. 'Course you can usually roll the Lizzie out by yourself.

"Then again, that box on the runnin'-board's s'posed to hold an extry can of essence, in case you run out of gas. But it don't. If you're wise it'll hold a canteen of Pinard and some sardines and chocolate."

"How about the bandages?" asked Dave. "We had a lot of practice bandaging, back there."

"Fergit most of it," advised Swazey, spitting at a "snakefeeder" which had settled near his foot. "You'll have a few bandages stowed away under the seat, but you won't use 'em except to swab spark-plugs with. The Frenchies do all the bandaging before we load up. The main thing is to have enough stuff for yourself---liquor mostly, like Cony-yack, and maybe half a boule of bread, and some American cigarettes. Frog cigarettes are God-awful."

"There's one thing I can't understand," declared Dave, "and that's how you drive at night without lights."

"Now you've got me, kid," confessed Swazey. "Damned if I know either. Sort o' feel and hear your way, I guess. Sometimes if the road's white---they mostly are, thank God ---you can just see the edge, and you follow that. Or if it's through a woods you sometimes look up and keep watchin' the open space a'tween the trees. But that's dangerous, for once in a while the damn roads bends and the space don't. I went in the ditch that way about a month ago, near Village Nègre, and had the Jesus H. Christ of a time gettin' out."

To give Dave a chance to practise Malleson sent him regularly with the mess-sergeant to Baccarat. He soon gained confidence, and often delayed the return purposely until after dark. The sergeant was vastly amused by Dave's determination to rehearse every possible emergency.

"When we get to that big tree at the cross-roads," the boy would say, "we'll scent gas. Then you see how long it takes me to attach my Tissot mask and be under way again."

He would bring the car to a halt at the tree, tear open the mask-box, snap on the mask, with its tube trailing over his shoulder, and creep on, bowed tensely over the wheel.

"Darned if I don't really smell gas, Dave," remarked his companion, "you do that so naturally."

One day Malleson accompanied Dave to town. The sun was low in the west, a haze lay over the pastures, and the trees cast their long, blurring shadows across the road. Swarms of insects drifted along ahead of the car, their tiny wings now and then glinting in the mellow light. Birds were twittering their evening songs in the thickets.

Malleson sat silent and distrait. He was conscious of that vague uneasiness one sometimes feels without plausible cause---a malaise of the spirit never obvious enough to be confidently diagnosed. Something done, or left undone; some inner disgust, regret, or guiltiness; some submerged fear.

Dave's absorption in the uncomplicated operation of keeping the ambulance on the road, his tight grasp of the wheel, the posture of his head and arms, were all familiar. Watching him half-aware, John felt the day merging its identity with that of another day, long past, when he and Dave had driven out to the farm by the river---the day America read of the breaking out of war. Surely the same sunshine, the same shadows of the leaves, the same boundless peace.

Dave's uniform and his own became senseless masquerade.

They dined at the Hotel de la Gare.

"Ah, mon lieutenant," sighed Jeanne, polishing a wineglass, "we miss you---you and your boy-ees. These who remain are gentils, maybe---yes---but what you call it?---rough." She patted Malleson's hand and smiled coquettishly at Dave.

"My brother, Jeanne," responded Malleson, an involuntary accent of pride in his voice. He had introduced Dave to many people in the last few years, never apologetically, to be sure, but never with more than matter-of-fact courtesy. Now the boy seemed to have taken on new personality, a new force that compelled recognition.

They listened awhile to Jeanne's playing, persuaded her to sing Tout le long de la Tamise and her favorite saucy O tais-toi!, and with bantering farewell took their leave.

The evening was moonless but starlit; the darkness had a clarity which rendered it almost luminous. Malleson had taken the wheel. They drove slowly, saying little, but alive to the beauty of the night.

At length Dave, with a little chuckle, remarked:

"That Bill Swazey is a queer fellow. I never heard a man swear more or tell dirtier stories, but he's taken no end of trouble helping me get the hang of things."

"Bill's one of the best drivers in the outfit."

After a moment Dave continued:

"The other night he came over to my bunk to bum a match. I was straightening out my things, and that little Bible was lying on the blanket. Bill picked it up and fingered it as if he loved it. I suppose I looked surprised, for he grinned in his comical way and then became serious. 'I had one too,' he said, 'but I lost it in the hell raisin' somewhere along the line. Got to get another before we go into action.' He said it was bad luck to be without it. And he wasn't making fun. He started to tell me something---'When I was a little kid at home'---but he didn't get any farther; only grinned again and said if I missed my Bible I'd know who had swiped it."

Malleson thought of his own copy, the timidly proffered gift of his mother, and of how it had rested undisturbed on his dresser where he had dutifully placed it the night Dave fished it out of his barracks bag . . . Something indefinable in the boy's talk now irritated him.

"You read it regularly, and believe it all, don't you, Dave ?"

"Yes."

The answer was quiet and final; not Dave's customary deprecation to his views, but a strange voice out of the night, unboyish and assured.

They rolled on in silence. The road, an opaque gray, seemed constantly to rise before the wheels just in time to pt-event their riding off into space. Unconsciously Malleson hail increased the speed. As they approached the cross-roads, where Dave usually detected "gas," an aeroplane circled humming over the fields. John stopped the car and retarded the motor, while they listened. The droning was a pulseless monotone.

"Friends," muttered John, in relief. "One of the first stories you'll find false, Dave, is the one about German planes coming out only on moonlight nights."

He pushed in the clutch, let it spring back and they rolled on.

"Suppose," ejaculated Dave suddenly, "that that plane had been Boche, and had dropped a bomb so near that one of us got hit. It'd be pretty tough on the other one, wouldn't it?"

"Pretty tough on the one, I'd say, Dave," laughed Malleson.

"Mm---yes, but he'd be done for---nothing to worry about. But the other . . ."