"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?"