the struggle has been
very hard."

Doggie rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his head from front to
back in his old indecisive way, and began to swear incoherently in
English. She smiled sadly.

"_Ah, mon pauvre ami!_"

He wheeled round: "Why do you call me '_mon pauvre ami_'?"

"Because I see that you would like to help me and you can't."

"Jeanne," cried Doggie, bending half over the table which was between
them.

She rose too, startled, on quick defensive. He said, in reply to her
glance:

"Why shouldn't I call you Jeanne?"

"You haven't the right."

"What if I gain it?"

"How?"

"I don't know," said Doggie.

The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face of Mo Shendish
appeared.

"'Ere, you silly cuckoo, don't yer know you're on guard to-night?
You've just got about thirty seconds."

"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I forgot. _Bon soir, mademoiselle. Service
militaire_," and he rushed out.

Mo lingered, with a grin, and jerked a backward thumb.

"If it weren't for old Mo, miss, I don't know what would happen to our
friend Doggie. I got to look after him like a baby, I 'ave. He's on to
relieve guard, and if old Mac--that's McPhail"--she nodded recognition
of the name--"and I hadn't remembered, miss, he'd 'ave been in what
yer might call a 'ole. Compree?"

"_Oui._ Yes," she said. "_Garde. Sentinelle._"

"Sentinel. Sentry. Right."

"He--was--late," she said, picking out her few English words from
memory.

"Yuss," grinned Mo.

"He--guard--house?"

"Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I do," cried the
admiring Mo. "Yuss. When his turn comes, up and down in the street, by
the gate." He saw her puzzled look. "Roo. Port," said he.

"_Ah! oui, je comprends_," smiled Jeanne. "_Merci, monsieur, et bon
soir._"

"Good night, miss," said Mo.

Some time later he disturbed Phineas, by whose side he slept, from his
initial preparation for slumber.

"Mac! Is there any book I could learn this blinking lingo from?"

"Try Ovid--'Art of Love,'" replied Phineas sleepily.

CHAPTER XIV

The spell of night sentry duty had always been Doggie's black hour. To
most of the other military routine he had grown hardened or deadened.
In the depths of his heart he hated the life as much as ever. He had
schooled himself to go through it with the dull fatalism of a convict.
It was no use railing at inexorable laws, irremediable conditions. The
only alternative to the acceptance of his positi