untry and would like news of his
family?'

"Old chap, that was a bit too much for me. Without thinking if I did
right or wrong, I went up to him and I said, 'Yes, there's me.' The
Boche asks me questions. I tell him my wife's at Lens with her
relations, and the little one, to. He asks where she's staying. I
explain to him, and he says he can see it from there. 'Listen,' he
says, 'I'll take her a letter, and not only that, but I'll bring you an
answer.' Then all of a sudden he taps his forehead, the Boche, and
comes close to me--'Listen, my friend, to a lot better still. If you
like to do what I say, you shall see your wife, and your kids as well,
and all the lot, sure as I see you.' He tells me, to do it, I've only
got to go with him at a certain time with a Boche greatcoat and a shako
that he'll have for me. He'd mix me up in a coal-fatigue in Lens, and
we'd go to our house. I could go and have a look on condition that I
laid low and didn't show myself, and he'd be responsible for the chaps
of the fatigue, but there were non-coms. in the house that he wouldn't
answer for--and, old chap, I agreed!"

"That was serious."

"Yes, for sure, it was serious. I decided all at once, without thinking
and without wishing to think, seeing I was dazzled with the idea of
seeing my people again; and if I got shot afterwards, well, so much the
worse--but give and take. The supply of law and demand they call it,
don't they?

"My boy, it all went swimmingly. The only hitch was they had such hard
work to find a shako big enough, for, as you know, I'm well off for
head. But even that was fixed up. They raked me out in the end a
lousebox big enough to hold my head. I've already some Boche
boots--those that were Caron's, you know. So, behold us setting off in
the Boche trenches--and they're most damnably like ours--with these
good sorts of Boche comrades, who told me in very good French--same as
I'm speaking--not to fret myself.

"There was no alarm, nothing. Getting there came off all right.
Everything went off so sweet and simple that I fancied I must be a
defaulting Boche. We got to Lens at nightfall. I remember we passed in
front of La Perche and went down the Rue du Quatorze-Juillet. I saw
some of the townsfolk walking about in the streets like they do in our
quarters. I didn't recognize them because of the evening, nor them me,
because of the evening too, and because of the seriousness of things.
It was so dark you couldn't put