owed
a bucket an hour ago, promising, on his honour as a soldier of the
King, to return it in fifty minutes at the most.

"And it is now a full sixty minutes by the clock on the kitchen
mantel, M'sieu le Capitaine," she would say, her colour mounting, "and
your soldier has not returned my bucket. If he does not bring it back,
when can we get another bucket?"

And so on, until Talbot would pacify her, promising her that the
bucket would be returned. Then he would go on to the Colonel,
breathless and perturbed, his mind so full of buckets that there was
hardly room for the business of the Tank Corps. Small wonder that the
sight of a gray habit was enough to unnerve the man.

He, himself, was billeted with a French family, just around the corner
from the Hospice. The head of the family had been, in the halcyon days
before the war, the village butcher. There was now Madame, the little
Marie, a sturdy boy about twelve, and the old Grand'mere. The husband
was away, of course,--"dans les tranchees," explained Madame with
copious tears.

Talbot was moved to sympathy, and made a few tactful inquiries as to
where the husband was now, and how he had fared.

"Il est maintenant a Paris," said Madame with a sigh.

"In Paris! What rank has he?--a General, maybe?"

"Ah, M'sieu s'amuse," said Madame, brightening up. No, her husband was
a chef at an officers' mess in Paris, she explained proudly. He had
been there since the war broke out. He would soon come home, the
Saints be praised. Then the Captain would hear him tell his tales of
life in the Army!

The hero came home one day, and great was the rejoicing. Thrilling
evenings the family spent around the stove while they listened to
stories of great deeds. On the day when his _permission_ was finished,
and he set out for his hazardous post once more, great was the
lamenting. Madame wept. All the brave man's relatives poured in to
kiss him good-bye. The departing soldier wept, himself. Even
Grand'mere desisted for that day from cracking jokes, which she was
always doing in a patois that to Talbot was unintelligible.

But they were very kind to Talbot, and very courageous through the
hard winter. When he lay ill with fever in his little low room, where
the frost whitened the plaster and icicles hung from the ceiling,
Madame and all the others were most solicitous for his comfort. His
appreciation and thanks were sincere.

By the middle of December the Battalion had finally se