the gun-carriage and drew the two tunics on to
her lap. John shivered as she touched the dead sergeant's.

Felicite grinned as she advanced with the tape. "Do not be shy of
me, monsieur," she encouraged him affably. "You are a hero, and I
myself am the mother of eight, which is in its way heroic.
There should be a good understanding between us. Raise your arms a
little, pray, while I take first of all the measure of your chest."

Her two arms--and they were plump, not to say brawny--went about him.
"Thirty-eight," she announced, after examining the tape. It's long
since I have embraced one so slight."

"Thirty-eight," repeated Mademoiselle Diane, puckering up her lips
and beginning to measure off the _pouces_ across the breast and back
of Sergeant Barboux's tunic. "Thirty-eight, did you say?"

"Thirty-eight, mademoiselle. We must remember that these brave
defenders of ours sometimes pad themselves a little; it will be
nothing amiss if you allow for forty. Eh, monsieur?" Felicite
laughed up in John's face. "But you find some difficulty,
mademoiselle. Can I help you?"

"I thank you--it is all right," Diane answered hurriedly.

"Waist, twenty-nine," Felicite continued. "One might even say
twenty-eight, only monsieur is drawing in his breath."

"Where are the scissors, Felicite?" demanded her mistress, who had
carefully smuggled them beneath her skirt as she sat.

"The scissors? Of a certainty now I brought them--but the sight
of that heathen Ojibway, when he gave me the tunic, was enough to
make any decent woman faint! I shook like an aspen, if you will
credit me, all the way across the drill-ground, and perhaps the
scissors . . . no, indeed, I cannot find them . . . but if
mademoiselle will excuse me while I run back for another pair. . . ."
She bustled off towards the Commandant's quarters.

Mademoiselle Diane reached down a hand to the tunic which had fallen
at her feet, and drew it on to her lap again, as if to examine it.
But her eyes were searching John's face.

"Why do you shiver?" she asked.

"I beg of you not to touch it, mademoiselle. It--it hurts to see you
touching it."

"Did you kill him?"

"Of whom is mademoiselle speaking?"

"Pray do not pretend to be stupid, monsieur. I am speaking of that
other man--the owner of this tunic--the sergeant who took you into
the forest. Did you kill him?"

"He died in fair fight, mademoiselle."

"It was a duel, then?" He did not answer, a