"but it is mended."

"Good!" said the general. "Now for the front, to beat the Germans
at their own game. We shall get them. It may be long, but we shall
get them!"

That was the autumn of the offensive of 1916, by which the French
retook, in ten days, what it had cost the Germans many months to
gain.

Pierre was there in that glorious charge at the end of October which
carried the heights of Douaumont and took six thousand prisoners.
He was there at the recapture of the Fort de Vaux which the Germans
evacuated in the first week of November. In the last rush up the
slope, where he had fought long ago, a stray shell, an inscrutable
messenger of fate, coming from far away, no one knows whence, caught
him and ripped him horribly across the body.

It was a desperate mass of wounds. But the men of his squad loved
their corporal. He still breathed. They saw to it that he was carried
back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville.

It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope
of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the
crash of far-thrown shells. In the close, dim shelter of the inner
room Pierre came to himself.

He looked up into the face of Father Courcy. A light of recognition
and gratitude flickered in his eyes. It was like finding an old
friend in the dark.