He brightened up amazingly and said that it was a capital idea. But when I asked for a room the little _patronne_ declared that she didn’t have a bed in the house. Perhaps I could get one at the hotel opposite the station. I couldn’t, nor did I find a room vacant in any one of the other hotels. “Well,” I said, “I’m not going to get into Y---- after midnight. It’s a small place, and I am not sure I can get a room there. I’m going back to Bourges. There are large hotels there, and there’s a train at ten.” “I can’t get to Y---- after midnight either,” gloomed the lieutenant. “There won’t be any place for me to stay, and at that hour I couldn’t telephone the camp to send an ambulance for me. I’ll have to go to Bourges, too.” To Bourges we went, and in addition to getting a room for myself I had to take the lieutenant along and get a room for him. Why had I ever met the man? Why had he ever met me? Would we never get rid of each other, or were we tied for life? The next day we met at an early luncheon and again we set out for X. “Remember,” I warned him, “we shall have barely time at the junction to make that other train. I know which track it is on now. We’ll all be ready to jump when this one stops.” But our train was shunted on to a side track a little way out of Bourges, in order to let some troop trains pass. We were late, and we got into X just in time to see the train for Y---- disappear around a curve. “See here,” I said to the pale and despairing man, “I do not propose to spend the rest of my life traveling between this wretched junction and the city of Bourges. I have already spent twenty-four hours traveling thirty-five miles. At this rate I might die of old age before I got back to America. You go up-town and find a motor-car, anything that will go, and we’ll finish the journey in that.” “How can I expect to find a motor-car?” cried the lieutenant. “You know as well as I do that no pleasure automobiles are allowed to run in France, and this hole won’t have any taxi-cabs. Besides a taxi down to Y---- would set us back two or three hundred francs.” “Never you mind about that,” I retorted. “You do what you are told. You go straight up-town and look for a car.” We quarreled by this time, like a real married pair, and with quite the air of a defeated husband he departed on his quest. In a short time he came back. Of course, there was no motor-car to be had, he reported, but he had had some luck. A colonel’s limousine had broken down somewhere in the neighborhood and it was being towed down to Y---- by an army truck. He had heavily subsidized the doughboys who were accompanying the truck, and they had agreed to stop on a certain corner long enough for us to surreptitiously get into the limousine.