a soldier, with your wound not healed from the trenches in the Vosges.
Monsieur, I salute you!" and I bent my head and held out my hand to
him.

"We're to expect nimble wits as well as courage of you young--shall I
say _American_ women?" he laughed as he bent over my hand. "Now
shall I not be led for introduction to the small brother and the old
nurse?" he asked with much friendly interest in his kind eyes.

It was a very wonderful thing to observe the wee Pierre listen to the
narration of Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, concerning the actions
of a small boy who had run out of a night of shot and shell into the
heart of his regiment and who had now lived five months in the
trenches with them. Pierre's small face is all of France and in his
heart under his bent chest burns a soul all of France. It is as if in
her death, at his birth, my beautiful mother had stamped her race upon
him with the greater emphasis.

"Is it that the small Gaston is a daredevil like is my Bob?" he
questioned as we all made a laughter at the story of the Count de
Lasselles concerning the sortie of the small idol from the trenches in
the dead of one peaceful night to return with a very wide thick
flannel shirt of one of the _Boches_, which he had caught hanging
upon a temporary laundry line back of the German trenches.

At that English "daredevil" word I was in my mind again back in the
old Chateau de Grez and into my own childhood.

"You young daredevil, you, hold tight to that vine until I get a grip
on your wrist, or you'll dash us both on the rocks below," was the