It lacked a half-hour of midnight when old Grigou hobbled out of his doorway and looked up into the clear, star-studded night. There was no other house in sight, only the shell-torn fields to the east, and to the west the dark, wooded hill frowning upon the poor, isolated abode. Even Talois was over the hill and Mademoiselle Jeanne was afraid to go there because there were dead men to be seen along the lone path through the woods and swaggering, leering Prussians in the village. One dead man in particular she was afraid of because he sat up against a tree near the path and was always grinning at her. But the person whom she feared the most of all was Monsieur le Capitaine. She did not know much about Monsieur le Capitaine excepting that he had come from far-off America to help the Fatherland. And the chief way in which he helped the Fatherland seemed to be by sprawling in their little house and eating their food and ordering them about. She wondered why anyone should have come all the way from America to help the Fatherland.
He was very efficient and very mysterious, was Monsieur le Capitaine. Sometimes he came in “ze flying machine,” sometimes on his feet. Once a small dirigible had landed in the shell-torn field and taken him away. He used often to go to Rheims and be gone for a week or more. Once Jeanne had flared up and denounced him and his friends for wrecking Rheims Cathedral and he had told her that this was nothing; that in America the people made a practice of destroying the cathedrals of the Indians. He told her that England was to blame for everything and that she ought to be glad that some brave men from America were helping poor, lonely, downtrodden Germany to thrash England. He told her that in America the national pastime was hanging black men and that all the lamp-posts in New York had black men hanging from them. Jeanne had shuddered at that.
Whatever in the world Monsieur le Capitaine was about, he was very much engrossed in it.
Neither Jeanne nor her poor old father had ever dared to ask him why he found their remote home so desirable. Perhaps that was the reason—its remoteness. About all that Jeanne really knew was that Monsieur le Capitaine knew all about “ze ships, when zey will go,” and that he had something to do with a balloon with two black crosses on it. She had always inferred that these two black crosses were a mark of special honor or distinction. Chiefly she wished, for her poor old father’s sake, that he would not drink their precious wine. If he would only let the wine alone, he could have ten black crosses for all she cared....
So you will readily appreciate the feelings with which Jeanne heard her father calling to her from outside the house.
“Jeanne! Jeanne! Monsieur le Capitaine est retourne!”
Jeanne emerged with a look of inquiring disappointment upon her troubled face and sure enough, there was the whir, whir, whir, whir overhead and a dark object circling against the darker background of sky.
“What matter, papa,” she said resignedly in French; “for sometime he must come. So, maybe, he will soon go. So? We shall think of his going, never of his coming. So, papa?”
Her father put his arm about her. “This is my brave little daughter,” he said. “But come, he will wish wine.”
The girl did not stir, however, but remained there with her father’s arm about her, wistfully following the dark object with her eyes. Now it went far away and disappeared, now came back again. Now it came very low, now ascended. Now it was directly overhead, then of a sudden it was coming straight toward them, silently and very low, as if it must be another machine altogether....
Out of it climbed Tom Slade of the Flying Corps, and shaking down his heavy garments as he walked he approached the two, his goggles up on his forehead like a prosy old schoolmaster.
“I zink it ees ze capitaine,” said the girl uncertainly.
“I ain’t even a lieutenant,” said Tom Slade. “Is this Mr. Grigou?”
Upon the old man’s acknowledgement he presented his trinket of a credential, that talisman which has won food and shelter for many a sore beset fugitive, in the humble, devastated homes of northern France—a button from the uniform of a French soldier in the old Franco-Prussian war. No compromising note of introduction, bringing possible peril to its holder, could have been so instrumental as this little memento, speaking the language of hallowed sentiment. Your Uncle Samuel knows the value of these little buttons.
I must not linger upon Slade’s personal intercourse with these people. I believe that the information service knew something of conditions there and knew that “Monsieur le Capitaine” was temporarily absent. It would seem to explain the very explicit instructions for Slade’s prompt return. I fancy I can detect another hand in this whole business and I think that Slade was merely the active figure in the enterprise. In any case, it was pretty close work, as they say. I am certain that M. Grigou did not expect Slade. The ways of the information service are dark and mysterious....
Slade was welcomed by this sturdy old Frenchman and his daughter and partook of a late supper with them, the while he spoke of his errand. He had made no attempt, of cour............