he child's heartbroken
exclamations--terms of endearment they seemed, and pitifully eloquent
enough, though the tongue in which they were spoken was unknown to me.

A lad of ten, barefoot and in overalls, came running from the house. He
knelt and stared into his mother's face, then he turned a dumb,
questioning glance at me. I could not meet his eyes. As I got my arms
under the shoulders of the fallen woman and started to drag her body into
the house, I could hear the little fellow sobbing softly but he didn't
speak. Hoping that it still might be of use, he helped with all his little
strength to move his mother's body. Inside the house, we pushed the
tumbled hair back from her face. A shrapnel bullet had entered her
forehead. It was useless to ask if human aid could serve her. Death had
been almost instantaneous. Then I saw a sight that spoke a volume on the
cruelty of war and the heroism of the sturdy French blood could I but tell
it.

The little lad gathered his sister in his protecting arms and
sat--speaking, manfully, words of comfort to her--beside the dead body of
their mother, shells meanwhile bursting all about the home which had been
their childhood haven of love and safety, and brick and plaster falling
about them from its shattered roof. The children were in serious danger,
but they steadfastly refused to leave their mother. I did not know enough
French to reason with them, and it was not until some French muleteers
sought shelter behind the building that I was able, through them, to
persuade the boy and girl to go farther to the rear, with them.

After this experience, like one in a dream, I made my way back to the
trenches, heedless of the shells whizzing overhead. The sight I had seen
haunted me.

Upon reaching my trench, I was brought back to my senses by some of my
"muckin'-in" pals, who threw all sorts of questions at me in a jesting
fashion, such as:

"Hello, Reuter, been tae Blighty an' back? Ye're a better sprinter than Ah
thocht"; "Hoo's aw wi' th' fokes at hame? Did ye remember the fags?"

It was some time before I was sufficiently myself again to be able to
answer them in the proper strain. My head looked like a cotton-and-bandage
demonstration, and I was a sorry looking sight altogether. I lived for the
next few days on bully beef biscuits, softened, and oxo cubes dissolved in
water.

In a few days we were relieved by French troops, and we force-marched
north to stem the German thrust at