te. He had been only
slightly wounded but the heavy bombardment had driven him entirely mad. He
was continually crying for his mother. I afterward learned that he and his
mother, who was blind, had lived together and had been warmly devoted to
each other, but at the outbreak of the war, his mother felt it her duty to
send him to fight. The boy recovered his mental faculties a month or two
after being sent home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

After the first dressing of my wound, I was sent to our transport station,
a short distance behind the lines, being told that in a few days I would
be fit for duty again. There was a farm here. By the time I reached the
farm house the pain of my wound was terrific. It was like a toothache all
over my head and down into my neck and shoulders. Nevertheless, I threw
myself onto a pile of straw in the barn and, after tossing about a while,
managed to fall asleep.

When I awoke it was daylight again, the entire night having passed.
Leaning over me was a little French girl--she must have been about eight
years old--with a pitcher of milk, which she held out toward me. In spite
of the condition of my mouth, I managed to swallow the milk. I was almost
starved and very weak. I tried to persuade the little girl to accept a
franc for the milk, but she shook her head, and skipped off. Following
her out of the barn, I met her mother to whom, also, I offered payment;
she, too, refused it.

We could hear the rumbling of big guns; shells were exploding not far
away; then came the noise of transport wagons approaching the farm. I
turned back toward the barn and had not gone more than ten paces when
there was a crash overhead. Splinters and shrapnel spattered into the farm
yard. I ducked and hastened my pace. Then there was a thud behind me, as
if a bag of potatoes had been dropped from a lorry. Almost simultaneously
came a scream from the little girl.

I turned just in time to see the mother of the child fall, roll down out
of the doorway in which the two were standing, and lie ominously still.
The little girl stood gazing in terror at the fallen woman. Her little
hands were raised shoulder high before her and she shrieked--hysterically
and helplessly. As I hastened toward them the child seemed to realize the
awful thing that had happened and threw herself upon her mother's body,
pressing her face against the dying woman's. I felt the tears trickling
down my cheek and smarting in my wound as I heard t