thanks. I have nothing to
give you--but this. Take it, M'sieur le Docteur. It is not much, yet to
me the earth holds nothing so valuable. It is the silver stirrup of
Jeanne d'Arc. It is yours."

* * * * *

In a glass case on the wall of my library hangs an antique bit of
harness which is my most precious piece of property. How its story came
about I do not even try to guess. As Philippe said the action of that
day took place on a very old battle-field. The shell which made the
sheltering crater doubtless dug up earth untouched for hundreds of
years. That it should have dug up the very object which was a tradition
in the Martel family and should have laid it in the grasp of a Martel
fighting for France with that tradition at the bottom of his mind seems
incredible. The story of the apparition of the Maid is incredible to
laughter, or tears. No farther light is to be got from the boy, because
he believes his story. I do not try to explain, I place the episode in
my mind alongside other things incredible, things lovely and spiritual,
and, to our viewpoint of five years ago, things mad. Many such have
risen luminous, undesirable, unexplained, out of these last horrible
years, and wait human thought, it may be human development, to be
classified. I accept and treasure the silver stirrup as a pledge of
beautiful human gratitude. I hold it as a visible sign that French blood
keeps a loyalty to France which ages and oceans may not weaken.

THE RUSSIAN

The little dinner-party of grizzled men strayed from the dining-room and
across the hall into the vast library, arguing mightily.

"The great war didn't do it. World democracy was on the way. The war
held it back."

It was the United States Senator, garrulous and incisive, who issued
that statement. The Judge, the host, wasted not a moment in
contradicting. "You're mad, Joe," he threw at him with a hand on the
shoulder of the man who was still to him that promising youngster,
little Joe Burden of The School. "Held back democracy! The war! Quite
mad, my son."

The guest of the evening, a Russian General who had just finished five
strenuous years in the Cabinet of the Slav Republic, dropped back a step
to watch, with amused eyes, strolling through the doorway, the two
splendid old boys, the Judge's arm around the Senator's shoulders,
fighting, sputtering, arguing with each other as they had fought and
argued forty odd years up to dat