On that third day I was dispatching from brigade-headquarters to the trenches. The General and his staff stood in a shepherd's house in the midst of a circle of rocks. Waiting there I began to understand that they were having difficulty in forcing the men forward in the later charges. The lines could see their dead of former advances, black and countless upon the valley snow. This was not good for the trenches. ... Now I realized that they were talking of Chautonville, the singer, the master of our folk-songs. We had heard of him along the line--how he had come running home to us out of Germany at the last moment in July--literally pelted forth, changed from an idol into an enemy and losing a priceless engagement-series on the Continent. He had not been the least bewildered, as the story went, rather enjoying it all.... They had monopolized him at the central headquarters, so that we had not heard him sing, but the gossip of it fired the whole line--a baritone voice like a thick starry dusk, having to do with magnolias and the south, and singing of the Russia that was to mean the world. Somehow he had made us gossip to that extent. So I was interested now to hear the name of Chautonville, and that he was coming. He was to sing us forward again. There was a pang in that, as I craned forward to look at the valley. It was not for our entertainment, but to make us forget our dead, to make us charge the valley again over our dead--it being planned that a remnant might make the crossing and charge the emplacements.... He came--a short barrel of a man and fat. They had kept him well at the Center. He was valuable in the hospitals, it was said. The least soldierly kind of a man I had seen in many days, save the Brigadier--so white and fat was Chautonville, the top of his head small, his legs short and thick, hands fat and white and tapering, a huge neck and chin with folds of white fat under it--a sort of a perfect bird dressed for present to the Emperor. Chautonville was big-eyed with all this--large, innocent brown eyes--innocent to me, but it was the superb health of the creature, his softness, clearness of skin and eye, that gave the impression to us, so lean and stringy. For his eyes were not innocent--something in them spoiled that. We were worn to buckskin and ivory, while here was a parlor kind of health--so clean in his linen, white folds of linen, about his collar and wrists. His chest was a marvel to look at--here in the field after weeks in the Carpathians. We were all range and angles, but this was a round barrel of a man, as thick as broad, his lips plump and soft, while we for weeks had licked a dry faded line, our faces strange with bone and teeth. "What is it?" he asked the General. I thought of a little doctor, called by others after consultation--an extra bit of dexterity required, this being the high-priced man. There was that indoor look of a barber about him, too.