Bois-le-Pretre, and won there his Croix de
Guerre.

"Monsieur le Chaplain," he said, "this forest is a household word for
danger and death throughout all Germany. I know, in your goodness, you
will not fail to bury any of my brave poilu whose bodies you there may
find."

Glorious was our canter down the dim leafy aisles of the Bois oak,
maple, ash, and pine flamed with the glorious coloring of autumn.
Crimson ivy festooned each swaying limb, weaving canopies against a
mottled sky of blue and white; morning-glories nodded greeting from the
hedges, while forest floors were carpeted with the red of geranium,
yellow of marigold and purple of aster.

[Illustration: THIACOURT UNDER SHELL-FIRE.]

Through the winding tunnel of foliage "Jip" was keenly alert. He seemed,
with his good horse sense, to feel that he was carrying a very
well-meaning but inexperienced Chaplain, more interested perhaps in
things botanical and floral than military. When I, for example, showed
inclination to dismount and inspect a beautiful saddle lying by the
roadside, it was evidently a German officer's, "Jip," with ears back,
snorted and galloped furiously past. A veteran sergeant afterwards
quietly remarked:

"'Jip' likely saved you that time, Chaplain, from a 'planted' bomb, for
which that saddle was the bait."

Evening found us at the near approaches of Saint Marie farm. As the area
from this point forward was drenched with gas, and therefore no place
for "Jip," who stubbornly refused to wear his mask, I decided to leave
him and continue forward on foot. Making my way to a dugout, then
Company Headquarters of the gallant 19th Machine Gunners, I happened
upon a young gunner named Costigan.

"Will you look after 'Jip' for me, Buddie?"

"I will be glad to, Father," he replied. "Your sister used to be my
teacher in the Ogden school, Chicago!"

How small the world was! To find that Bois-le-Pretre was just around the
corner from Chestnut and North State Street!

Grim and terrible, however, was the work just ahead. Entering that
forest was like going into some vast fatal Iroquois Theatre saturated
with death-dealing gas. It was even then being swept by a tornado of
screaming, bursting shells, scattering far and wide fumes of mustard and
chlorine, a single inhalation of which meant unspeakable agony and
death. But our brave boys were there with souls to be prepared, and poor
mangled bodies were there, reverently to be buried!

It was supreme