enant of the medical corps came to the door and looked out. He
smiled reassuringly at Martin Howe. "He's not violent any more. And
we'll send two guardians."

A sergeant came out with a little packet which he handed to Martin.

"That's his. Will you give it to them at the hospital at Fourreaux? And
here's his knife. They can give it back to him when he gets better. He
has an idea he ought to kill everyone he sees.... Funny idea."

The sun had risen and shone gold across the broad rolling lands, so that
the hedges and the poplar-rows cast long blue shadows over the fields.
The man, with a guardian on either side of him who cast nervous glances
to the right and to the left, came placidly, eyes straight in front of
him, out of the dark interior of the dressing-station. He was a small
man with moustaches and small, good-natured lips puffed into an o-shape.
At the car he turned and saluted.

"Good-bye, my lieutenant. Thank you for your kindness," he said.

"Good-bye, old chap," said the lieutenant.

The little man stood up in the car, looking about him anxiously.

"I've lost my knife. Where's my knife?"

The guards got in behind him with a nervous, sheepish air. They answered
reassuringly, "The driver's got it. The American's got it."

"Good."

The orderly jumped on the seat with the two Americans to show the way.
He whispered in Martin's ear:

"He's crazy. He says that to stop the war you must kill everybody, kill
everybody."

* * * * *

In an open valley that sloped between hills covered with beech-woods,
stood the tall abbey, a Gothic nave and apse with beautifully traced
windows, with the ruin of a very ancient chapel on one side, and
crossing the back, a well-proportioned Renaissance building that had
been a dormitory. The first time that Martin saw the abbey, it towered
in ghostly perfection above a low veil of mist that made the valley seem
a lake in the shining moonlight. The lines were perfectly quiet, and
when he stopped the motor of his ambulance, he could hear the wind
rustling among the beech-woods. Except for the dirty smell of huddled
soldiers that came now and then in drifts along with the cool
wood-scents, there might have been no war at all. In the soft moonlight
the great traceried windows and the buttresses and the high-pitched roof
seemed as gorgeously untroubled by decay as if the carvings on the cusps
and arches had just come from under the careful chisels