the first-line trenches--only two hundred yards
from the German front--during the bombardment, "to encourage and
comfort his men" (I quote), and that a bomb had exploded over the
trench and knocked a hole in his steel helmet.

I don't know which impressed me most--the idea of a lad of twenty
having so established the faith in his courage amongst his superior
officers as to be safe as a comfort and encouragement for the men,
or the fact that, if the army had had those steel casques at the
beginning of the war, many lives would have been saved.

The Aspirant came in with the second detachment the night before
last--the eighth. The regiment was in and all quartered before he
appeared.

We had begun to fear something had happened to him, when he
turned up, freshly shaved and clean, but with a tattered overcoat on
his arm, and a battered helmet in his hand.

Amelie greeted him with: "Well, young man, we thought you were
lost!"

He laughed, as he explained that he had been to make a toilet, see
the regimental tailor, and order a new topcoat.

"I would not, for anything in the world, have had madame see me in
the state I was in an hour ago. She has to see my rags, but I spared
her the dirt," and he held up the coat to show its rudely sewed-up
rents, and turned over his helmet to show the hole in the top.

"And here is what hit me," and he took out of his pocket a rough
piece of a shell, and held it up, as if it were very precious. Indeed, he
had it wrapped in a clean envelope, all ready to take up to Paris and
show his mother, as he is to have his leave of a week while he is
here.

I felt like saying "Don't," but I didn't. I suppose it is hard for an
ambitious soldier of twenty to realize that the mother of an only son,
and that son such a boy as this, must have some feeling besides
pride in her heart as she looks at him.

So now we are settled again, and used to the trotting of horses, the
banging of grenades and splitting of mitrailleuses. From the window
as I write--I am up in the attic, which Amelie calls the "atelier,"
because it is in the top of the house and has a tiny north light in the
roof--that being the only place where I am sure of being undisturbed--
I can see horses being trained in the wide field on the side of the hill
between here and Quincy. They are manoeuvring with all sorts of
noises about them--even racing in a circle while grenades and guns
are fired.

In spite of all that, there came near