by the hand, she leads
him homewards.

The sun sank slowly down to the ruddy West. The swallows swooped past
the two children, almost touching them with their wings, that hardly
seemed to move. It was getting dark. Catherine and Jean pressed closer
together.

Catherine dropped her flowers one after the other by the way. They could
hear, in the wide silence, the untiring chirp-chirp of the crickets.
They were afraid, both of them, and they were sad; the melancholy of
nightfall had entered into their little hearts. All round them was
familiar ground, but the things they knew the best looked strange and
uncanny. The earth seemed suddenly to have grown too big and too old for
them. They were tired, and they began to think they would never reach
the house, where mother was making the soup for all the family. Jean's
whip hung limp and still, and Catherine let the last of her flowers
slip from her tired fingers. She was dragging Jean along by the arm, and
neither said a word.

At last they saw a long way off the roof of their house and smoke rising
in the darkening sky. Then they stopped running, and clapping their
hands together, shouted for joy. Catherine kissed her little brother;
then they set off running again as fast as ever their weary legs would
carry them. When they reached the village, there were women coming back
from the fields who gave them good evening. They breathed again. Their
mother was on the door-step, in a white cap, soup-ladle in hand.

"Come along, little ones, come along!" she called to them. And they
threw themselves into her arms. When she reached the parlour where the
cabbage soup was smoking on the table, Catherine shivered again. She
had seen night come down over the earth. Jean, seated on the settle, his
chin on a level with the table, was already eating his soup.

THE MARCH PAST

[Illustration: 213]

RENE, Bernard, Roger, Jacques, and Etienne feel sure there is nothing
finer in the world than to be a soldier. Francine agrees with them
and she would love to be a boy to join the army. They think so because
soldiers wear fine uniforms, epaulettes and gold lace, and glittering
swords. There is yet another reason for putting the soldier in the front
rank of citizens--because he gives his life for his Country. There is no
true greatness in this world but that of sacrifice, and to offer one's
life is the greatest of all sacrifices, because it includes all others.
That is why the hearts o