king faster, and
calling attention to something in the distance. When the Artist halted,
moved uncertainly a few yards, and stopped again, we were lost. He did
not need to pronounce the inevitable words, "I'll just get this little
bit." The Artist's "just" means anything from twenty to ninety minutes.

Food without companionship is not enjoyable, least of all on a holiday.
There was no use suggesting that we could come back this way, and
advancing that the light would be so much better later. The Artist had
started in. I cast around for some way of escape from an impossible
situation. The only farmhouse in sight was at the end of a long lane,
and did not look as if it could produce the makings of a meal. The
poorest providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their producers. Who
has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch and longed for cream on a dairy
farm? What city boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connection
between the cackling of hens and the certitude of fresh eggs on the table
at the next meal? What muncher of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant
has not thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was on his last
summer's vacation?

A bridge crossed a stream just ahead of us. On the other side was a
thick clump of trees. I walked forward with the thought that a drink of
water at least might not be bad. When I got to the bridge I heard
plaintive barking and a man's voice. The man was explaining to the dog
why he ought not to be impatient. He would have his good bone, with
plenty of meat on it, in a little quarter of an hour. A house-wagon was
standing back from the side of the road. The owner was shaking a
casserole over a fire, and the dog was sniffing as near as he dared. The
dog gave me his attention, and the man turned. It was a favorite waiter
of a favorite Montparnasse cafe.

"Pierre," I cried, "where did you drop from? What luck!"

Pierre put the casserole on the window ledge, out of the dog's reach, and
greeted me. You never could surprise Pierre. He was always master of
the situation. One has to be in a Montparnasse cafe. I noted with
approval the precaution that Pierre had taken. Either the dog was very
hungry or there was something particularly tempting in the casserole.

Pierre had gone to join his regiment on the second day of the war. I had
not seen him or heard of him since then. He told me that he had been
unable to shake off a _bronchite_, caught in