le face uplifted. He had no mustache under his
nose--only a little flat smear over each corner of his mouth. He
whistled, and then yawned in the face of the morning till the tears
came.

An artilleryman who was quartered on the edge of the wood--over there
where a line of horses and carts looked like a gypsies' bivouac--came
up, with the well in his mind, and two canvas buckets that danced at
the end of his arms in time with his feet. In front of the sleepy
unarmed soldier with a bulging bag he stood fast.

"On leave?"

"Yes," said Eudore; "just back."

"Good for you," said the gunner as he made off.

"You've nothing to grumble at--with six days' leave in your
water-bottle!"

And here, see, are four more men coming down the road, their gait heavy
and slow, their boots turned into enormous caricatures of boots by
reason of the mud. As one man they stopped on espying the profile of
Eudore.

"There's Eudore! Hello, Eudore! hello, the old sport! You're back
then!" they cried together, as they hurried up and offered him hands as
big and ruddy as if they were hidden in woolen gloves.

"Morning, boys," said Eudore.

"Had a good time? What have you got to tell us, my boy?"

"Yes," replied Eudore, "not so bad."

"We've been on wine fatigue, and we've finished. Let's go back
together, pas?"

In single file they went down the embankment of the road--arm in arm
they crossed the field of gray mud, where their feet fell with the
sound of dough being mixed in the kneading-trough.

"Well, you've seen your wife, your little Mariette--the only girl for
you--that you could never open your jaw without telling us a tale about
her, eh?"

Eudore's wan face winced.

"My wife? Yes, I saw her, sure enough, but only for a little
while--there was no way of doing any better--but no luck, I admit, and
that's all about it."

"How's that?"

"How? You know that we live at Villers-l'Abbaye, a hamlet of four
houses neither more nor less, astraddle over the road. One of those
houses is our cafe, and she runs it, or rather she is running it again
since they gave up shelling the village.

"Now then, with my leave coming along, she asked for a permit to
Mont-St-Eloi, where my old folks are, and my permit was for
Mont-St-Eloi too. See the move?

"Being a little woman with a head-piece, you know, she had applied for
her permit long before the date when my leave was expected. All the
same, my leave came before her permit. Spite o' th