ite him, and I involuntarily leaned
against the wall behind me, but suddenly thought, "Be careful. You'll
break the glass in the picture of Whistler's Mother, and you'll be
sorry." It brought me up standing, and he didn't notice. Isn't the mind
a queer thing?

He finished his tea, and rose to go. As he picked up his cap he showed
me a hole right through his sleeve--in one side, out the other-and a
similar one in his puttee, where the ball had been turned aside by the
leather lacing of his boot. He laughed as he said, "Odd how near a chap
comes to going out, and yet lives to drink tea with you. Well, good-bye
and good luck if I don't see you again."

And off he marched, and I went into the library and sat down and sat
very still.

It was not more than half an hour after Captain Edwards left that the
corporal came in to ask me if I had a window in the roof. I told him
that there was, and he asked if he might go up. I led the way, picking
up my glasses as I went. He explained, as we climbed the two flights of
stairs, that the aeroplane had reported a part of the Germans they were
hunting "not a thousand feet from this house." I opened the skylight.
He scanned in every direction. I knew he would not see anything, and he
did not. But he seemed to like the view, could command the roads that
his posse was guarding, so he sat on the window ledge and talked. The
common soldier is far fonder of talking than his officer and apparently
he knows more. If he doesn't, he thinks he does. So he explained to me
the situation as the "men saw it." I remembered what Captain Edwards had
told me, but I listened all the same. He told me that the Germans were
advancing in two columns about ten miles apart, flanked in the west by a
French division pushing them east, and led by the English drawing them
toward the Marne. "You know," he said, "that we are the sacrificed
corps, and we have known it from the first--went into the campaign
knowing it. We have been fighting a force ten times superior in
numbers, and retreating, doing rear-guard action, whether we were really
outfought or not--to draw the Germans where Joffre wants them. I reckon
we've got them there. It is great strategy-Kitchener's, you know."

Whether any of the corporal's ideas had any relation to facts I shall
never know until history tells me, but I can assure you that, as I
followed the corporal downstairs, I looked about my house--and, well, I
don't deny it,