," he said. "He was a pig of an officer, a
dirty Boche. Very chic, too, and young like a schoolboy."

One of the women patted him on the shoulder. Her eyes glistened.

"Did you slit his throat, the dirty dog? Eh, I'd like to get my fingers
round the neck of a dirty Boche!"

"I finished him with a grenade," said the poilu. "It was good enough. It
knocked a hole in him as large as a cemetery. See then, my cabbage. It
will make you smile. It is a funny kind of mascot, eh?"

He put on the table a small leather pouch stained with a blotch of
reddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could hardly undo the little
clasp.

"He wore this next his heart," said the man. "Perhaps he thought it
would bring him luck. But I killed him all the same! 'Cre nom de Dieu!"

He undid the clasp, and his big fingers poked inside the flap of the
pouch.

"It was from his woman, his German grue. Perhaps even now she doesn't
know he's dead. She thinks of him wearing this next to his heart. 'Cre
nom de Dieu! It was I that killed him a week ago!"

He held up something in his hand, and the light through the estaminet
window gleamed on it. It was a woman's lock of hair, like fine-spun
gold.

The two women gave a shrill cry of surprise, and then screamed with
laughter. One of them tried to grab the hair, but the poilu held it
high, beyond her reach, with a gruff command of, "Hands off!" Other
soldiers and women in the estaminet gathered round staring at the yellow
tress, laughing, making ribald conjectures as to the character of the
woman from whose head it had come. They agreed that she was fat and
ugly, like all German women, and a foul slut.

"She'll never kiss that fellow again," said one man. "Our old one has
cut the throat of that pig of a Boche!"

"I'd like to cut off all her hair and tear the clothes off her back,"
said one of the women. "The dirty drab with yellow hair! They ought to
be killed, every one of them, so that the human race should by rid of
them!"

"Her lover is a bit of clay, anyhow," said the other woman. "A bit of
dirt, as our poilus will do for all of them."

The soldier with the woman's hair in his hand stroked it across his
forefinger.

"All the same it is pretty. Like gold, eh? I think of the woman,
sometimes. With blue eyes, like a German girl I kissed in Paris-a
dancing-girl!"

There was a howl of laughter from the two women.

"The old one is drunk. He is amorous with the German cow!"

"I will keep it as