k Rechamp."
After that, dead silence: and the poor devil left in the trenches to
digest that "_retook_"!

There are thousands and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing
them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean
de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too--but he got his leg
smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet
under a horse-blanket, saying to himself: "_Rechamp retaken_."

"Of course," he explained with a weary smile, "as long as you can tot
up your daily bag in the trenches it's a sort of satisfaction--though
I don't quite know why; anyhow, you're so dead-beat at night that no
dreams come. But lying here staring at the ceiling one goes through the
whole business once an hour, at the least: the attack, the slaughter,
the ruins...and worse.... Haven't I seen and heard things enough on
_this_ side to know what's been happening on the other? Don't try to
sugar the dose. I _like_ it bitter."

I was three days in the neighbourhood, and I went back every day to see
him. He liked to talk to me because he had a faint hope of my getting
news of his family when I returned to Paris. I hadn't much myself, but
there was no use telling him so. Besides, things change from day to day,
and when we parted I promised to get word to him as soon as I could
find out anything. We both knew, of course, that that would not be till
Rechamp was taken a third time--by his own troops; and perhaps soon
after that, I should be able to get there, or near there, and make
enquiries myself. To make sure that I should forget nothing, he drew
the family photographs from under his pillow, and handed them over:
the little witch-grandmother, with a face like a withered walnut, the
father, a fine broken-looking old boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin,
the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister
ditto, and Alain, the young brother--just the age the brutes have been
carrying off to German prisons--an over-grown thread-paper boy with too
much forehead and eyes, and not a muscle in his body. A charming-looking
family, distinguished and amiable; but all, except the grandmother,
rather usual. The kind of people who come in sets.

As I pocketed the photographs I noticed that another lay face down by
his pillow. "Is that for me too?" I asked.

He coloured and shook his head, and I felt I had blundered. But after a
moment he turned the photograph over and held