"'You boast in the town that your two sons are at the front,' she said, 'but I know that one at least of them is not.' And I was dumbfounded. I say to her, 'Woman, it is a lie you tell me. Both of my boys are with their regiments, in the trenches even now, if by the grace of the good God they still live.'
"'No,' she say to me, 'one of your sons hides in the hotel of Madame Larue. How do I know this secret, Monsieur the wood merchant? I know because this day have I washed the shirt, with his name on it, at the river bank. His name, Helois,—the Lieutenant Helois—was stamped on the collar and the shirt came from the hotel, La Fontaine.'
"I tell her that it is a mistake—that it is the great injustice to me she speaks, and that night I dressed in my best clothes to penetrate this mystery—to meet this man who disgracefully used the name of my son—to expose this impostor who would bring shame to the name of Helois, the wood merchant, whose two sons have been fighting for France these three long years.
"And so, Monsieur, I meet this man at the hotel. She was right. His name was Helois. Here is his card. The Lieutenant Louis F. Helois, and he is a lieutenant in the United States Army."
"So it was a mistake," replied the Captain, handing the card back to the wood merchant, whose lobster red features bore an enigmatical smile.
"No,—not the mistake, the truth," replied the wood merchant. "Not my son—but my grandson—the son of my son—the son of my third son who went to America years ago. And now he comes back in the uniform of liberty to fight again for France. Ah, Messieurs les Officiers—the sons of France return from the ends of the world to fight her cause."
While the wood merchant was telling us that the American grandson had only stopped three days in the town and then had moved up to service at the front, the air was shattered by a loud report. It was the snap of the whip in the hands of the young French amazon, standing high on the load of wood. We escorted the fuel proudly to the Place de la République. Soon the fires were burning briskly and the smell of onions and coffee and hot chow was on the air.
The stoves were pitched at the bottom of a stone monument in the centre of the square. Bags of potatoes and onions and burlap covered quarters of beef and other pieces of mess sergeants paraphernalia were piled on the steps of the monument, which was covered with the green and black scars from dampness and age.
The plinth supported a stone shaft fifteen feet in height, which touched the lower branches of the trees. The monument was topped with a huge cross of stone on which was the sculptured figure of the Christ.
Little Sykoff, the battery mess sergeant, stood over the stove at the bottom of the monument. He held in his hand a frying pan, which he shook back and forth over the fire to prevent the sizzling chips in the pan from burning. His eyes lowered from an inspection of the monument and met mine. He smiled.