The Marne

t daylight they st

had yet known. The air of Paris, that day, was heavy with doom. There was no mist

is four more years, his grown-up responsibilities, and the blessed uniform thanks to which he, even he, a poor little ambulance-driver of eighteen, ranked as a soldier of the great untried army of his country. It was something-it was a great deal-to be even the humblest part, the mos

something new and overwhelming continued to grow in Troy. It was probably the greatest hour of the war that

l the familiar elements of the procession he had so often watched unrolling itself endlessly east and west from the Atlantic to the Alps. Nothing new in the sight-but something new in

anel Troy pushed his light ambulance ahead and skimmed past, just for the joy of seeing the fresh young heads rising pyramid-wise above the sides of the lorry, hearing the snatches of familia

een times he was more occupied with the details of their own particular job-to which he

ver been over this ground before?" Troy as

after the battle of the Ma

uite a kid," said Jacks with i

y rejoined sulkily; a

hin him: he wanted to talk and remember and compare. But his companion was unimaginative, and perhaps a l

French officers came up and chatted with Troy. To all of them he felt the desperate need of explain

d, in the tone of one who affirms. "It

lieutenant seasoned by four years at the front; and another officer added gravely:

g-we're all comi

d a base hospital, they found themselves in a darkened village, where, after a s

the humiliation (the word was stupid, but he could find no other) of being among all these young men, only a year or two his seniors, and none, he was sure, more passionately eager than himself for the work that lay ahead, and yet so hopelessly divided from him by that stupi

their white foreheads as they laboured over their correspondence. Others were playing checkers, or looking at the illustrated papers, and everybody was smoking and talking-not in large groups, but quietly, by twos or threes. Young women in trig uniforms, with fresh innocent f

or larking: the note was that which might have prevailed in a club of quiet elderly men, or in a drawing-room where the guests did not know each other well. Troy was all the more surprised because he remembered the jolly calls of the young soldiers in the motor-trucks, and the son

but presently they were interrupted by the noise of a motor stopping outside. Ther

themselves laughingly against the walls near the entrance, the door above was cau

ied; and Troy recognized the piercing acc

and left as she made her triumphant way down the lane of khaki, to what, at her appearance, had somehow promptly become the stage at the farther end of

on this sacred soil, and at this fateful moment, with the iron wings of doom clanging so close above their heads. But i

mprovised platform-a door laid on some

Troy like the twinge of a dental instrument. And her audience loved it all, indiscriminately and voraciously, with souls hungry for the home-fl

so glorious! And there overhead, just above them, brooded and clanged the black wings of their doom.... Troy's mockery was softened to tenderne

is going to say a few words," the elderly

l of artless laughter and tears! Troy remembered her dissertations on th

dge of her unsteady stage. Her eyes burned large in a face grown su

began apologetically; and the ce

is what I want to say. I've come from the French front-pretty near the edge. They're dying there, boys-dying by thousands, now, this minute.... But that's not it-I

le, her pretty

go, I've got to know the country they're dying for-and I understand why they

-and she's worth it! Do

Done a few things too-poor little toddler! Well-it was time we took her by the hand, and showed her how to behave. And I wasn't the

ugh, and lo

said Miss Wa

some since then, in the hospitals, and I've seen fellows lying there shot 'most to death, and their little old mothers in white caps arriving from 'way off at the other end of France. Well, those fellows know how to see their mothers coming even if they're blind, and how to hug 'em even if their arms are off.... And the children-the way they go on

or you, only for myself. I didn't want to have a shell get

boys-the

wing herself up to heroic height; and