And what a battle it had been! The Americans had taken Vaux and driven the Germans back across the bridge at Château-Thierry, the French were pressing hard on their left flank, the advance on Paris had been checked--and the poor old couple and the territorial in the ambulance had not fallen into enemy hands, but had been discovered by Jacks where Troy had left them, and hurried off to places of safety the same night. As Troy lay and listened, tears of weakness and joy ran down his face. The Germans were back across the Marne, and he had really been in the action that had sent them there! The road to Paris was barred--and Sophy Wicks was somewhere in France.... He felt as light as a feather, and if it had not been for his deathly weakness he would have jumped out of bed and insisted on rejoining the ambulance. But as it was he could only lie flat and feebly return Jacks's grin.... * * * * * There was just one thing he had not told Jacks: a little thing that Jacks would not have understood. Out in the wheat, when he had felt that tap on the shoulder, he had turned round quickly, thinking that a friend had touched him. At the same instant he had stumbled and fallen, and his eyes had grown dark; but through the darkness he still felt confusedly that a friend was near, if only he could lift his lids and look. He did lift them at last; and there in the dawn he saw a French soldier, haggard and battle-worn, looking down at him. The soldier wore the uniform of the _chasseurs à pied_, and his face was the face of Paul Gantier, bending low and whispering: "_Mon petit--mon pauvre petit gars...._" Troy heard the words distinctly, he knew the voice as well as he knew his mother's. His eyes shut again, but he felt Gantier's arms under his body, felt himself lifted, lifted, till he seemed to float in the arms of his friend. He said nothing of that to Jacks or any one, and now that the fever had dropped he was glad he had held his tongue. Some one told him that a sergeant of the _chasseurs à pied_ had found him and brought him in to the nearest _poste de secours_, where Jacks, providentially, had run across him and carried him back to the base. They told him that his rescue had been wonderful, but that nobody knew what the sergeant's name was, or where he had gone to.... ("If _ever_ a man ought to have had the Croix de Guerre--!" one of the nurses interjected emotionally.) Troy listened and shut his lips. It was really none of his business to tell these people where the sergeant had gone to; but he smiled a little when the doctor said: "Chances are a man like that hasn't got much use for decorations ..." and when the emotional nurse added: "Well, you must just devote the rest of your life to trying to find him." Ah, yes, he would do that, Troy swore--he would do it on the battlefields of France. THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. * * * * * By EDITH WHARTON.