idly across the sky. A moment later the long,
slender finger of a searchlight probed among little heaps of cloud,
then, sweeping in a wide arc, revealed in striking outline the shape
of a huge biplane circling over the sleeping city. It was one of the
night guard of Paris.

On the following morning, we were at the Gare des Invalides with our
luggage, a long half-hour before train-time. The luggage was absurdly
bulky. Drew had two enormous suitcases and a bag, and I a steamer
trunk and a family-size portmanteau. We looked so much the typical
American tourists that we felt ashamed of ourselves, not because of
our nationality, but because we revealed so plainly, to all the world
military, our non-military antecedents. We bore the hallmark of fifty
years of neutral aloofness, of fifty years of indifference to the
business of national defense. What makes the situation amusing as a
retrospect is the fact that we were traveling on third-class military
passes, as befitted our rank as _eleve-pilotes_ and soldiers of the
_deuxieme classe_.

To our great discomfiture, a couple of _poilus_ volunteered their
services in putting our belongings aboard the train. Then we crowded
into a third-class carriage filled with soldiers--_permissionnaires_,
_blesses_, _reformes_, men from all corners of France and her
colonies. Their uniforms were faded and weather-stained with long
service. The stocks of their rifles were worn smooth and bright with
constant usage, and their packs fairly stowed themselves upon their
backs.

Drew and I felt uncomfortable in our smart civilian clothing. We
looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel that
we belonged there. But in a whispered conversation we comforted
ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rightful
stand with the Allies, in six months after the event, hundreds of
thousands of American boys would be lugging packs and rifles with the
same familiarity of use as these French _poilus_. They would become
equally good soldiers, and soon would have the same community of
experience, of dangers and hardships shared in common, which make men
comrades and brothers in fact as well as in theory.

By the time we had reached our destination we had persuaded ourselves
into a much more comfortable frame of mind. There we piled into a
cab, and soon we were rattling over the cobblestones, down a long,
sunlit avenue in the direction of B----. It was late of a mild
afternoo