He never told any one, because he was seven years old and very shy. No one would have understood. And it was dreadful to him when people did not understand. It was about his father's watch. On one thick, hot, velvet-black night, his father had come into his room and waked him with a sudden switching on of the light, and said, "Hop up, old chap, you've got to go and tell your mother to stop crying." "But, father, why? Will she not stop when you tell her?" "It is because of me that she cries. I have got to go away." "Oh, father, why have you got to go away?" "Because there is war, René. I have got to go and fight. And you have got to stay and look after your mother. Quick now; go to her and say, 'I'm here.'" "But, father----" "Here's my watch for you, old chap, and the chain, you see. Mind you take care of it. Don't let it run down. I want to find it right to the minute when I come back. And I want to find your mother well, not crying--and you, my brave little man, taking care of everything for me." "Like the watch, father?" "Yes, like the watch." So he had to take simply terrible care of his father's watch. If it ran down, if he let it run down, what in the world would not happen? The battles might be lost to France. His mother might die. And then whatever could he say to his father? In the days he used to hurry home from everything, to the watch. And in the nights he used to sit up in bed to listen for its ticking. He would stay awake for hours in the nights, afraid it might stop and he not know. Often in the nights he would cry from the tiredness of having to keep awake and listen. But in the days he would forget the watch, sometimes, for a little. To-day he was happy because of the goldfish. Hospital, Friday, October 15th Just these days the people of several of the men have been coming from far to see them. Way off, in some little town of Brittany or the Béarn, or Provence, there had arrived word that the soldier this or that had been wounded thus or so, and was at the hospital. Upon months and months of waiting in dreadful, helpless ignorance, the shock had come as a relief almost. But how strange and terrible a thing the journey was to people who could understand so little what they must do. Where to go, what to do. Perhaps they were people who had never ventured beyond the town where the diligence stopped, who never had taken a train. They did not know what the Champagne meant. They did not know where Paris was. The departure was a tremendous thing. A tearing up of roots and cutting with a knife. Then the journey, confused and terrifying. Then the great city, and the great hospital.