"Ah? That will clarify itself, perhaps, in time. If you will bear with me, I should like to tell you a little story to be passed on to those who are not his friends. Will you not be seated, Madame?" The Bonnie Lassie resumed her place on the bench. Standing before us, the big man began to speak. Many times since have I wished that I might have taken down what he said verbatim; so gracious it was, so simple, so straightly the expression of a great and generous personality. "Emile Garin," he said, "was a son of Belgium. He was poor and his people were little folk of nothing-at-all. Moreover, they were dead. So he came to your great country to make his living. When our enemies invaded my country and the call went out to all sons of Belgium, the little Garin was ashamed because he knew that he was physically unfit for military service. But he tried. He tried everywhere. In the mornings they must sweep him away from our Consul-General's doorsteps here because otherwise he would not--You spoke, Monsieur?" "Nothing. I only said, 'God forgive us!'" "Amen," said the narrator gravely. "Everywhere they rejected him as unfit. So he became morbid. He hid himself away. Is it not so?" "That is why they left Our Square so mysteriously," confirmed the Bonnie Lassie. "After that he hung about the docks. He saw his chance and crawled into the hold of a vessel as a stowaway. He starved. It did not matter. He was kicked. It did not matter. He was arrested. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except that he should reach Belgium. And he did reach my country at the darkest hour, the time when Belgium needed every man, no matter who he was. But he could not be a soldier, the little Garin, because he was unable to march. He had weak legs." At this point the eternal feminine asserted itself in the Bonnie Lassie. "I _told_ you there was something," she murmured triumphantly. "Hush!" said I. "I am glad to find that he had one true defender here," pursued the biographer of Plooie. "Though he could not fight in the ranks there was use for him. There was use for all true sons of Belgium in those black days. He was made driver of a--a charette; I do not know if you have them in your great city?" He paused, and I guessed that the rumble of heavy wheels on the asphalt, heard near by, had come opportunely. "Ah, yes; there is one." "A dump-cart," supplied the Bonnie Lassie. "Merci, Madame. A dump-cart. It is perhaps not an evidently glorious thing to drive a dump-cart for one's country--unless one makes it so. But it was the best the little Garin could do. His legs were what you call quaint--I have already told you. He was faithful and hard-working. They helped build roads near the front, the little Garin and his big cart." "Not precisely safety-first," whispered the Bonnie Lassie to me, maliciously. "You are interrupting the story," said I with dignity.