poke English better than either Florette or her
brother, and the boys were infinitely grateful and relieved to hear
their own language spoken in this remote place.

"We are Americans," said Tom. "We escaped from the prison camp across
the Alsace border, and we're on our way to the frontier. I knew you were
French on account of the fleur-de-lis on the end of your flagpole----"

"And ze button--yess?" the old man urged, interrupting him.

Tom told him the whole story of Frenchy and the Leteurs, and of how he
had come by his little talisman.

"I have fought in zat regiment," the old man said, "many years before
you are born. I have seen Alsace lost--yess. If you were Germans I would
_die_ before I would give you food. But I make you true welcome. I have
been many years in America. Ah, I have surprise you."

"What is this place?" Archer ventured to ask.

"Ziss is Mernon--out of fifty-two men they take forty-one to ze
trenches. My two sons, who are weavers too, they must go. Now they take
the women and the young girls."

Further conversation developed the fact that the old man had worked in a
silk mill in America for many years and had returned to Alsace and this
humble place of his birth only after both of his sons, who like himself
were weavers, had been forced into the German service. "If I do not come
back and claim my home, it is gone," he said. So he had returned and was
working the old hand loom with his aged fingers, here in the place of
his birth.

He was greatly interested in the boys' story and gave them freely of his
poor store of food which they ate with a relish. Apparently he was not
under the cloud of suspicion or perhaps his age and humble condition
and the obscurity and remoteness of his dwelling gave him a certain
immunity. In any event, he carried his loathing of the Germans with a
fine independence.

"In America," he said, "ze people do not know about ziss--ziss beast.
Here we _know_. Here in little Mernon our women must work to make ze
road down to ze river. Why is zere needed a road to ze river? Why is
zere needed ze new road above Basel? To bring back so many
prisoners--wounded? Bah! Ziss is what zey _say_. Lies! I have been a
soldier. Eighty-two years I am old. And much I have travelled. So can I
see. What you say in Amerique--make two and two together--yess? Zere
will be tramping of soldiers over zese roads to invade little
Switzerland. Am I right? If it is necessaire--yess! _Necessaire!_