"Once," went on the girl, plucking a blade of grass and making a knot with it about her finger, "two villagers, Simon Barit and Armand Cartier, were requested by the curé, who is very small and weak, to tell my uncle to sing no more. Ah monsieur, it was terrible!" "Yes?" "My uncle he is a very strong man; he threw Simon Barit into the stream, and the other he chased almost to the village." "And so, like the mill-stream, he goes on forever?" "Ah, yes, monsieur, like the war--forever. Listen!" A great voice, sonorous as that of the fabled giant calling for his evening meal of an Englishman, rent the air. The October wind seemed to quiver to its lowest note, and the water racing over the chute was quieter than it had been for hours. "I must go, monsieur. It is his supper he wants." "And may I not come too?" "Ah--but no! I am frightened." "Of me?" She raised her wide brown eyes to his, and her eyelashes, which so jealously guarded those guileless depths, parted grudgingly, revealing to him their full beauty.... Another roar shattered the air, and she laid her hand upon his wrist. "You must not come," she said earnestly. "He would throw you into the stream." His melancholy face gave way to a boyish grin. "If he did, mademoiselle, my ghost would haunt him forever. All night it would sing outside his window--and, in truth, my singing is no less terrible than his." There was another roar, followed by a reference to the untimely decease of ten thousand devils. Without a word, she reached for her book, and, throwing her shawl over her left shoulder, hurried away. The aviator watched her girlish figure with its unconscious grace, then, turning about, he strolled to the machine, and, sitting on the side of the fuselage, surveyed its bullet-punctured carcass. "Five kilometers and a little better," he soliloquized in English, "and a doubtful prospect of a meal.... Contrast that with what the gods offer here--a cosy fire, coffee, eggs and chips, I warrant, and the daintiest of little maids--to say nothing of a musical uncle with an amiable propensity for throwing visitors into the stream. By Jove, it is chilly.... Over in dear old England they'll be roasting nuts and telling ghost-stories to-night." The fast-thickening shadows deepened into the blackness of an October night; the wind grew quieter, but there was a bite in the air that made him draw his fur collar about his ears. "What excellent French the little lady uses," he went on. "I wonder who her parents were, and why the deuce she has to live with this ogre. And what eyes! Enough to make one invent new songs of Araby just to see them sparkle and soften.... One moment sad, another tender--and always lovely. Steady, the Air Force--you're becoming sentimental." He looked at the battered machine and shook his head; a solitary raindrop lit on his face and slid down its surface like a tear.