ulletins, was interested in the workings of Gunner Black's colt
automatic. Gunner Black, most anxious to show her, demonstrated the
action of the pistol but, forgetting that inevitable shell in the
chamber, shot himself in the arm.

It was only an incident. The noise scared Louise, but not the wound. She
had seen too many Americans get shot in the moving pictures.

The captain and I were quartered in the house of the Cure of the
cathedral. The old housekeeper of the place made the captain blush when
she remarked her surprise that there were such young captains in the
American army. Her name was Madame Dupont, and she was more than pleased
to learn from the captain that that had been the maiden name of his
mother.

The captain's room had the interior dimensions and heavy decorations of
the mystic inner sanctum of some secret grand lodge. Religious paintings
and symbols hung from the walls, which were papered in dark red to match
the heavy plush hangings over the ever closed windows.

Two doors in the blank wall swung open revealing a hermetically sealed
recess in which a bed just fitted. This arrangement, quite common in
France, indicated that the device now popular in two-room sleeping
apartments in America, must have been suggested by the sleeping customs
of mediaeval times.

Early the next morning, our battery pulled out for the front. We were
bound for the line. We took the roads out of Saint Nicolas to the east,
making our way toward that part of the front that was known as the
Luneville sector. Our way lay through the towns of Dombasle,
Sommerviller, Maixe, Einville, Valhey, Serres, to the remains of the
ruined village of Hoeville.

The sector runs almost along the border between France and old Lorraine,
occupied by the Germans since 1870. Even the names of the old French
towns beyond the border had been changed to German in the effort of the
Prussians to Germanise the stolen province.

It was in this section during the few days just prior to the outbreak of
the war that France made unwise demonstration of her disinclination
toward hostilities with Germany. Every soldier in France was under arms,
as was every soldier in Europe. France had military patrols along her
borders. In the French chamber of deputies, the socialists had rushed
through a measure which was calculated to convince the German people
that France had no intentions or desire of menacing German territory. By
that measure every French soldier