ress and--"

"What's that you say? Not war?"

"Yes, war, young man! We're in it at last, up to our necks; in it with
men and ships and munitions and foodstuffs and everything else we
have to help with, praise the Lord! You'll fight beneath the Stars and
Stripes, instead of under the Tricolor. I say, Dev, that's positively
the last word I'll utter. You've got to rest!"

In a weak, quavering fashion, but with sincere enthusiasm, I tried to
celebrate by singing a few bars of the "Star-Spangled Banner" and a
little of the "Marseillaise." Dunny was right, however; the conversation
had exhausted me. In the midst of my patriotic demonstration I fell
asleep.

My convalescence was a marvel, I learned from young Dr. Raimbault, the
surgeon from the chateau who came to see me every day. According to
him, I was a patient in a hundred, in a thousand; he never wearied
of admiring my constitution, which he described by the various French
equivalents of "as hard as nails." Not a set-back attended the course of
my recovery. First, I sat propped up in bed; then I attained the dignity
of an arm-chair; later, slowly and painfully, I began to drag myself
about the room. But the day on which my physician's rapture burst all
bounds was the great one when I crawled from the pavilion, gained a
bench beneath the trees, and sat enthroned, glaring at my crutches. They
were detestable implements; I longed to smash them. And they would, the
doctor airily informed me, be my portion for three months.

To feel grumpy in such surroundings was certainly black ingratitude.
It was an idyllic place. My pavilion was a sort of Trianon, a Marie
Antoinette bower, all flowers and gold. Fresh green woods grew about
it; a lake stretched before it; swans dotted the water where trees
were mirrored, and there were marble steps and balustrades. Across this
glittering expanse rose Raincy-la-Tour, proud and stately, with its
formal gardens and its fountains and its Versailles-like front. In
the afternoons I could see the wounded soldiers walking there or being
pushed to and fro in wheel-chairs; legless and armless, some of them;
wreckage of the mighty battle-fields; timely reminders, poor heroic
fellows, that there were people in the world a great deal worse off than
I.

Yet, instead of being thankful, I was profoundly wretched. I moped and
sulked; I fell each day into a deeper, more consistent gloom. I tried
grimly to regain my strength, with a view to seeking ot