"Monsieur is an officer?" faltered the drummer,--"a general, perhaps. Pardon, but I do not know the uniform." "A corporal, simply--a soldier of France, like thyself. Be not afraid, my little one. All thou sayest shall be held in confidence. Tell me thy difficulties." His voice was very kind, the kindest Little Tapin had heard in three long months, and suddenly the barrier of his Breton reserve gave and broke. The nervous strain had been too great. He must have sympathy and advice--yes, even though it meant confiding in a stranger and the possible discovery and failure of his dearly cherished plans. "A soldier of France!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "Ah, monsieur, there you have all my difficulty. What a thing it is to be a soldier of France! And not even that, but a drummer, a drummer who is called Little Tapin because he is the smallest and weakest in the corps. To be taken from home, from the country he loves, from Brittany, and made to serve among men who despise him, who laugh at him, who avoid him in the hours of leave, because he is not bon camarade. To wear a uniform that has been already worn. To sleep in a dormitory where there are bêtes funestes. To have no friends. To know that he is not to see Plougastel, and the sweetheart, and the Little Mother for three years. Never to fight, but, at best, to drum voyous out of a garden! That, monsieur, is what it is to be a soldier of France!" There were tears in Little Tapin's eyes now, but he was more angry than sad. The silence of months was broken, and the hoarded resentment and despair of his long martyrdom, once given rein, were not to be checked a second time. He threw back his narrow shoulders defiantly, and said a hideous thing:-- "Conspuez l'armée française!" There was an instant's pause, and then the other leaned forward, and with one white-gloved hand touched Little Tapin on the eyes. * * * * * Before them a great plain, sloping very gradually upward in all directions, like a vast, shallow amphitheatre, spread away in a long series of low terraces to where, in the dim distance, the peaks of a range of purple hills nicked and notched a sky of palest turquoise. From where they stood, upon a slight elevation, the details of even the farthest slopes seemed singularly clean-cut and distinct,--the groups of grey willows; the poplars, standing stiffly in twos and threes; the short silver reaches of a little river, lying in the hollows where the land occasionally dipped; at long intervals, a whitewashed cottage, gleaming like a sail against this sea of green; even, on the most distant swell of all, a herd of ruddy cattle, moving slowly up toward the crest,--each and all of these, although in merest miniature, as clear and vivid in form and color as if they had been the careful creations of a Claude Lorrain.