uacious young companion, had
blown into the Toul sector from no one seemed to know exactly where,
more than that he had originally been a ship's boy, had been in a German
prison camp, and had escaped through Alsace and reached the American
forces after a perilous journey.

Lately he had been running back and forth on his motorcycle between the
lines and points south in a region which had not been defiled by the
invader, but now he was going far into the West "for service as
required."

That was what the slip of paper from headquarters had said, and he did
not speculate as to what those services would be, but he knew that they
would not be exactly holding Sunday-School picnics in the neighborhood
of Montdidier. Billy Brownway, machine gunner, had assured Thatchy that
undoubtedly he was wanted to represent the messenger service on the War
Council at Versailles. But Thatchy did not mind that kind of talk.

West of Revigny, he crossed the old trench line, and came into the area
which the Blond Beast had crossed and devastated in the first year of
the war. Planks lay across the empty trenches and as he rode over first
the French and then the enemy ditches, he looked down and could see in
the moonlight some of the ghastly trophies of war. Somehow they affected
him more than had the fresher results of combat which he had seen even
in the quiet sector he had left.

Silently he sped along the thirty-mile stretch from Revigny to Chalons,
where a little group of French children pressed about him when he paused
for gasoline.

"Yankee!" they called, chattering at him and meddling with his machine.

"Le cheveu!" one brazen youngster shouted, running his hand through his
own hair by way of demonstrating Thatchy's most conspicuous
characteristic.

Thatchy poked him good-humoredly. "La route, est-belle bonne?" he asked.

The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing
at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of
explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and
Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.

"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take that one," he said more
to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word
_salient_ took a chance on _nose_ and jumped up and down in joyous
abandon, calling, "Bump le nez--le _salient_!" apparently in keen
appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.

He rode away with a c