streamed from his eyes at the recollection of their last parting,
down there, at Remilly, when they embraced, asking themselves if they
should ever meet again, and how, under what circumstances of sorrow or
of gladness. It was nothing, then, that they had passed toilsome days
and sleepless nights together, with death staring them in the face? It
was to bring them to this abominable thing, to this senseless, atrocious
fratricide, that their hearts had been fused in the crucible of those
weeks of suffering endured in common? No, no, it could not be; he turned
in horror from the thought.

"Let's see what I can do, little one; I must save you."

The first thing to be done was to remove him to a place of safety, for
the troops dispatched the wounded Communists wherever they found them.
They were alone, fortunately; there was not a minute to lose. He first
ripped the sleeve from wrist to shoulder with his knife, then took off
the uniform coat. Some blood flowed; he made haste to bandage the arm
securely with strips that he tore from the lining of the garment for the
purpose. After that he staunched as well as he could the wound in the
side and fastened the injured arm over it, He luckily had a bit of cord
in his pocket, which he knotted tightly around the primitive dressing,
thus assuring the immobility of the injured parts and preventing
hemorrhage.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes, I think so."

But he did not dare to take him through the streets thus, in his shirt
sleeves. Remembering to have seen a dead soldier lying in an adjacent
street, he hurried off and presently came back with a capote and a
_kepi_. He threw the greatcoat over his friend's shoulders and assisted
him to slip his uninjured arm into the left sleeve. Then, when he had
put the _kepi_ on his head:

"There, now you are one of us--where are we to go?"

That was the question. His reviving hope and courage were suddenly
damped by a horrible uncertainty. Where were they to look for a shelter
that gave promise of security? the troops were searching the houses,
were shooting every Communist they took with arms in his hands. And in
addition to that, neither of them knew a soul in that portion of the
city to whom they might apply for succor and refuge; not a place where
they might hide their heads.

"The best thing to do would be to go home where I live," said Maurice.
"The house is out of the way; no one will ever think of visiting it. But
it is in the Rue des O