So the wounded airman bent over and took the body by the shoulders; the gendarme lifted the feet; the little bell-mistress followed, holding to one of the sagging arms, as though fearing that these strangers might take away from her this dead man who had been so much more to her than a mere lover. When they laid him in the market cart she released his sleeve with a sob. Still crying, she climbed to the seat of the cart and gathered up the reins. Behind her, flat on the floor of the cart, the airman and the gendarme had seated themselves, with the young man’s body between them. They were opening his tunic and shirt now and were whispering together, and wiping away blood from the naked shoulders and chest. "He’s still warm, but there’s no pulse," whispered the airman. "He’s dead enough, I guess, but I’d rather hear a surgeon say so." The gendarme rose, stepped across to the seat, took the reins gently from the girl. "Weep peacefully, little one," he said; "it does one good. Tears are the tisane which strengthens the soul." "Ye-es.... But I am remembering that--that I was not very k-kind to him," she sobbed. "It hurts--_here_--" She pressed a slim hand over her breast. "_Allons!_ Friends quarrel. God understands. Thy friend back there--he also understands now." "Oh, I hope he does!... He spoke to me so tenderly--yet so gaily. He was even laughing at me when they shot him. He was so kind--and droll--" She sobbed anew, clasping her hands and pressing them against her quivering mouth to check her grief. "Was it an execution, then?" demanded the gendarme in his growling voice. "They said he must be a franc-tireur to wear such a uniform----" "Ah, the scoundrels! Ah, the assassins! And so they murdered him there under the tree?" "Ah, God! Yes! I seem to see him standing there now--his grey, kind eyes--and no thought of fear--just a droll smile--the way he had with me--" whispered the girl, "the way--_his_ way--with me----" "Child," said the gendarme, pityingly, "it _was_ love!" But she shook her head, surprised, the tears still running down her tanned cheeks: "Monsieur, it was more serious than love; it was friendship." CHAPTER XVIII THE AVIATOR Where the Fontanes highroad crosses the byroad to Sainte Lesse they were halted by a dusty column moving rapidly west--four hundred American mules convoyed by gendarmerie and remount troopers. The sweating riders, passing at a canter, shouted from their saddles to the big gendarme in the market cart that neither Nivelle nor Sainte Lesse were to be defended at present, and that all stragglers were being directed to Fontanes and Le Marronnier. Mules and drivers defiled at a swinging trot, enveloped in torrents of white dust; behind them rode a peloton of the remount, lashing recalcitrant animals forward; and in the rear of these rolled automobile ambulances, red crosses aglow in the rays of the setting sun.