sees, one is lame."

I felt a hotness emerging from my flannel collar and rushing up my face
as I bent over that damned Silver Doctor that wouldn't loose its grip on
the Black Hackle. I didn't see the Black Hackle or the Silver Doctor for
a moment. "Beg pardon," I growled. "I forgot." I mumbled platitudes.

"M'sieur le Docteur has right," Philippe announced unruffled. "One
should fight for France. I have tried to enlist, there are three times,
explaining that I am '_capable_' though I walk not evenly. But one will
not have me. Therefore I have shame, me. I have, naturally, more shame
than another because of Jeanne."

"Because of Jeanne?" I repeated. "Who is Jeanne?"

There was a pause; a queer feeling made me slew around. Philippe's old
felt hat was being pulled off as if he were entering a church.

"But--Jeanne, M'sieur," he stated as if I must understand. "Jeanne
d'Arc. _Tiens_--the Maid of France."

"The Maid of France!" I was puzzled. "What has she to do with it?"

"But everything, M'sieur." The vivid eyes flamed. "M'sieur does not
know, perhaps, that my grandfather fought under Jeanne?"

"Your grandfather!" I flung it at him in scorn. The man was a poor
lunatic.

"But yes, M'sieur. My grandfather, lui-meme."

"But, Philippe, the Maid of Orleans died in 1431." I remembered that
date. The Maid is one of my heroic figures.

Philippe shrugged his shoulders. "Oh--as for a _grandpere_! But not the
_grandpere a present_, he who keeps the grocery shop in St. Raymond.
Certainly not that grandfather. It is to say the _grandpere_ of that
_grandpere_. Perhaps another yet, or even two or three more. What does
it matter? One goes back a few times of grandfathers and behold one
arrives at him who was armorer for the Maid--to whom she gave the silver
stirrup."

"The silver stirrup." My Leonard rod bumped along the bow; my flies
tangled again in the current. I squirmed about till I faced the guide
in the stern. "Philippe, what in hell do you mean by this drool of
grandfathers and silver stirrups?"

The boy, perfectly respectful, not forgetting for a second his affair of
keeping the canoe away from the fish-hole, looked at me squarely, and
his uncommon light eyes gleamed out of his face like the eyes of a
prophet. "M'sieur, it is a tale doubtless which seems strange to you,
but to us others it is not strange. M'sieur lives in New York, and there
are automobiles and trolley-cars and large buildings _en masse_, and to