"It was a tiny nothing," his comrade repeated, somewhat shamefacedly. "It was this way. In the factory where I was working, there were many brave girls working also, brave girls, for the work was dangerous. It was especially dangerous, because there was a church on one side and a hospital near by. A Boche aviator always tries to hit a hospital when he can. The Red Cross to him is as it would be to a bull." "I've noticed that," the boy agreed. "At the front, here, they shell the field hospitals every chance they get. But tell the story!" "One foggy morning, then," the hunchback went on, "about a week before Christmas, an aviator who had escaped our air-sentries by reason of the mist, let fall a bomb. I feel sure it was meant for the hospital, but it hit us instead. I was working on the top floor. The bomb--it was quite a little one--came through the roof. I happened to be the one to see it coming and I saw, at once, that it would fall on the stone bench in front of which the girls were working. "It was not the time for politeness, you understand, so I swept my left arm round, and the girl who was working next to me fell down flat. "I must have been a little slow in bringing down my arm after I had swung it round, for the shell struck the bench at the same second and the splinters collected in my hand and wrist. The hand was almost quite cut off. The doctors said it was a lovely amputation--they are droll fellows, those doctors--but to make the matter more sure, they cut off my arm a little higher, as you see. It was to prevent infection, they said." "And the girl?" The hunchback looked grave. "She was black and blue for a week," he said. "You see, I am rather strong and perhaps I hit her a little too hard." "But you saved her life!" "That, of course," said the Frenchman, simply; "what else would any one do?" "And were you the only one hurt?" "Alas, no!" sighed Croquier. "It is there that I was a fool. If I had hit two girls, one on either side, it would have been very good. But I had a sharp tool in my right hand and I did not think of it. The brave little one on that side was killed. No one else was hurt. It was a wonderful escape." "I don't quite see it that way," the boy retorted. "One girl killed and one man crippled, by a small aëroplane bomb, looks to me more like a catastrophe than an escape. What happened to the girl whose life you saved?" "She was as kind as she was brave," the hunchback answered. "She was very rich, or, rather, she had been so before the war, though she had put on workmen's clothes and was slaving in a munitions factory. She was doing it for France. "Every day that I was in the hospital she came to see me after working hours. So did other of the operatives. They were all very kind, but she was the kindest. It was she who secured permission for me to have the 'captive Kaiser' on the little table beside my hospital bed. The doctors could refuse her nothing. She had a smile, ah! one to remember!"