This impassioned appeal from the boy as he ended, and stood in mute bewilderment, his eyes again haunted by that look of hopeless terror, aroused the audience to prolonged applause. Philip now stepped to his side, and, as he laid his hand reassuringly on the little shoulder, the refugee began his pitiful tale. His arm had been cut off, he told, by a German soldier, who had made his mother cry, when he had rushed up and pounded him with his fists to make him desist. The soldier had dragged his mother away, and then he had been told that she had died. There was a quiver to the lad’s voice as he related this sorrowful incident, but he winked his eyes together to keep back the tears. Two days later, with his aged grandparents, he had been driven to the town square, and there a soldier had shot his grandfather because the old man had rebuked him for dragging the boy’s grandmother roughly about. She had shrieked and fallen, to be trampled in the crush, for when they picked her up she was very white, and had never opened her eyes again. When all the women and children were herded together like cows, and driven along a road, with a big German soldier pointing his gun at them, Jean had suddenly run away, as fast as he could, and he had run and run with his eyes shut, for he was afraid of the bullets that came whistling on all sides of him. Finally he had fallen from exhaustion, and then he had crawled into the dark cellar of a shelled house. Here he had remained for a long time, going out at night to a battlefield near and taking what food he could find from the knapsacks of the dead soldiers. At last he could find no more food, and then he had wandered on, walking wearily along for miles and miles, until he had become part of those fleeing throngs of refugees that blocked the roads for many long miles, sleeping on the roadside at night. Sometimes he would have a little bread, or a piece of cheese given to him, and then for days he went hungry. Finally he reached a town, where a lady with a red cross on her white cap had cared for him in a hospital. But the Germans shelled the hospital, and they said the lady was killed, and then— Well, he had gone on again, walking at night, alone, from place to place, when no one could see him, while hiding in the woods by day. On learning that he was not far from the French army, he had struggled on until he was within a short distance of their lines, where he hid in a forest. When a dark still night came, he stealthily crept into No Man’s Land, and, on his hands and knees, worked his way from hole to hole, quickly wiggling into one if he heard the slightest sound, until he reached the French sentry, who pointed his gun at him and told him to halt.