ppens. It keeps off bad luck."

Clerambault sat and listened with a heavy heart.

"Was he happier towards the last?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir, I think he was what you call resigned, just like we all
were. I don't know how it is, but you all seem to start out with the
same foot in the morning. We are all different, but somehow, after a
while it seems as if we were growing alike. It's better, too, that
way. You don't mind things so much all in a bunch.... It's only when
you get leave, and after you come back--it's bad, nothing goes right
any more. You ought to have seen the little Sergeant that last time."

Clerambault felt a pang as he said quickly:

"When he came back?"

"He was very low. I don't know as I ever saw him so bad before."

An agonised expression came over Clerambault's face, and at his
gesture, the wounded man who had been looking at the ceiling while he
talked, turned his eyes and understood, for he added at once:

"He pulled himself together again, after that."

"Tell me what he said to you, tell me everything," said Clerambault
again taking his hand.

The sick man hesitated and answered.

"I don't think I just remember what he said." Then he shut his eyes,
and lay still, while Clerambault bent over him and tried to see what
was before those eyes under their closed lids.

* * * * *

An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow _boyau_ one could
see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard
ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking
with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from
Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up
in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear
his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment
had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would
speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off,
knocking down a lump of frozen turf.

"Hullo, old gravedigger," said the other, "don't get too fresh."

"Might as well make an end of it now," said Maxime. "That's what they
all seem to want."

"Give the boche your skin for a present? I'll say you're generous!"

"It's not only the boches; they all have a hand in it."

"Who, all?"

"All of them back there where I come from, in Paris, friends and
relations; the people on the other side of the grave, the live
ones.--As for us, we a