"I can't shoot any more," he groans. "I've lost my nerve." He begins to cry. Poor old man! He has lost a son, eleven nephews, and four grandsons in this War, as well as his nerve. Poor old chap. And he remembers the siege of Paris, he remembers only too well that terrible, far-off, unreal, dreamlike time that has suddenly leapt up out of the dim, far past into the present, shedding its airs of unreality, and clothing itself in all the glaring horrors of to-day, until again the Past is the Present, and the Present is the Past, and both are inextricably and cruelly mixed for Frenchmen of Caspiar's age and memories. A touch on my arm and I start violently. "Madame!" It is poor old Madame Caspiar whispering to _me_. "You are English. You are brave n'est-ce-pas? Can _you_ shoot the wolf." I am staggered at the idea. "Shoot! Oh! I'd miss it! I daren't try it. I've never even handled a gun!" I stammer out. I see myself revealed now as the coward that I am. "Then _I_ shall shoot it!" says old Madame Caspiar in a trembling voice. She picks up the gun. "When I was a girl I was a very good shot!" She speaks loudly, as if to reassure herself. Old Caspiar suddenly jumps up. "You're mad, Terèse. Vous êtes folle! You can't even see to read the newspapers, _You!_" He takes the gun from her! She begins to cry now. "I shall go and call the others," she says, weeping. "Be quiet," he says crossly. "You'll frighten the beast away if you make a noise like that!" He crosses the room and peers out again! "It's eating something!" he says. "Mon Dieu! _It's got_ Chou-chou." Chou-chou is--_was_ rather, the Caspiar's pet rabbit. "You shall pay for that!" mutters old Caspiar. Gently opening the window, he fires. * * * * * "Not since 1860 have I seen a wolf," says Caspiar, looking down at the dead beast. "Then they used to run in out of the forest when I was an apprentice in my uncle's Inn. We were always frightened of them. And now, even after the Germans, we are frightened of them still." "I am more frightened of wolves than I am of Germans," confesses Madame Caspiar in a whisper. We stand there in the breaking dawn, looking at the dead wolf, and wondering fearfully if there are not more of its kind, creeping in from the snow-filled plains beyond. Other figures join us. Two Red-Cross French doctors, a wounded English Colonel, la grandmère, Mme. Caspiar's mother, and a Belgian priest, all come issuing gradually from the low portals of the Inn into the yard. Then in the chill dawn, with the glare of the snow-fields in our eyes, we discuss the matter in low voices. It is touching to find that each one is thinking of his own country's soldiers, and the menace that packs of hungry wolves may mean to them, English, Belgian, French; especially to wounded men.