d the place
for the time being was empty. The thieves were never discovered. The
sentry was positive that no one had passed him but two women, one of them
carrying a baby. Madame Lelanne had dressed it up in a child's cloak and
hood, and had carried it in her arms. As it must have weighed nearly a
couple of hundred-weight suspicion had not attached to them.

Space did not allow of any separation; broken Frenchmen and broken
Germans would often lie side by side. Joan would wonder, with a grim
smile to herself, what the patriotic Press of the different countries
would have thought had they been there to have overheard the
conversations. Neither France nor Germany appeared to be the enemy, but
a thing called "They," a mysterious power that worked its will upon them
both from a place they always spoke of as "Back there." One day the talk
fell on courage. A young French soldier was holding forth when Joan
entered the hut.

"It makes me laugh," he was saying, "all this newspaper talk. Every
nation, properly led, fights bravely. It is the male instinct. Women go
into hysterics about it, because it has not been given them. I have the
Croix de Guerre with all three leaves, and I haven't half the courage of
my dog, who weighs twelve kilos, and would face a regiment by himself.
Why, a game cock has got more than the best of us. It's the man who
doesn't think, who can't think, who has the most courage--who imagines
nothing, but just goes forward with his head down, like a bull. There
is, of course, a real courage. When you are by yourself, and have to do
something in cold blood. But the courage required for rushing forward,
shouting and yelling with a lot of other fellows--why, it would take a
hundred times more pluck to turn back."

"They know that," chimed in the man lying next to him; "or they would not
drug us. Why, when we stormed La Haye I knew nothing until an
ugly-looking German spat a pint of blood into my face and woke me up."

A middle-aged sergeant, who had a wound in the stomach and was sitting up
in his bed, looked across. "There was a line of Germans came upon us,"
he said, "at Bras. I thought I must be suffering from a nightmare when I
saw them. They had thrown away their rifles and had all joined hands.
They came dancing towards us just like a row of ballet girls. They were
shrieking and laughing, and they never attempted to do anything. We just
waited until they were close up and then shot