"You escape?" said Tom, trying to make himself understood. "How did you get back of the French lines?" "Shot broke--yach," the man said, his face lapsing again into a hopeless expression of suffering. "All right," said Tom, simply. "Comrade--I say it too. All right?" The soldier's face showed unmistakable relief through his suffering. "Let's see what's the matter," Tom said, though he knew the other only vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his suffering was the raw condition of his wrist where the manacle encircled it and the heavy chain pulled. It seemed to Tom as if this cruel sore might have been caused by the chain dragging behind him and perhaps catching on the ground as he fled. "The French didn't put that on?" he queried, rather puzzled. The soldier shook his head. "Herr General," said he. "Not the Americans?" "Herr General--gun." Then suddenly there flashed into Tom's mind something he had heard about German artillerymen being chained to their guns. So that was it. And some French gunner, or an American maybe, had unconsciously set this poor wretch free by smashing his chain with a shell. "You're in the French lines," Tom said. "Did you mean to come here? You're a prisoner." "Ach, diss iss petter," the man said, only half understanding. "Yes, I guess it is," said Tom. "I'll bind your foot up and then I'll take that chain off if I can and bind your wrist. Then we'll have to find the nearest dressing station. I suppose you got lost in this forest. I been in the German forest myself," he added; "it's fine--better than this. I got to admit they've got fine lakes there." Whether he said this by way of comforting the stranger--though he knew the man understood but little of it--or just out of the blunt honesty which refused to twist everything German into a thing of evil, it would be hard to say. He had about him that quality of candor which could not be shaken even by righteous enmity. Tearing two strips from his shirt, he used the narrower one to make a tourniquet, which he tied above the man's ankle. "If you haven't got poison in it, it won't be so bad," he said. "Now I'll take off that chain."