At that M—— calls aloud:
"Gabriel!"
Little Butrel rushes up to us.
"You have some cigarette papers! Pass them around."
Butrel draws from his pocket a bundle of them, and slowly unfolds the leather in which they are wrapped. Then he offers us a packet almost intact, a treasure which he extends with a smile in his blue eyes and about his thin lips. Once again we find ourselves compelled to accept another's kindness.
"I know where to find more," Butrel assures us. "There are some good friends of mine among the artillerymen over at hill X——, and they can get as many as they want."
"But if we remain out here at the advance posts for long, how will you manage then, when your friends the artillerymen are no longer available?"
"Please do not worry about that! When my cigarette-papers are finished, then I will chew or smoke a pipe. Take what you wish … one packet, because that will give me pleasure; a second one because that will please old grandfather. Is that not so, grandfather?"
M—— shakes his head, smiles and turns to us:
"I must tell you that he has been kindness itself to me since I rejoined. And yesterday in the woods, he saved my life. He stood up in the clearing to fire at the Boches, thus giving me time to get to the hilltop. It lasted quite five minutes, and all the time he was firing he was moving down towards them…. Name of a joke! but one would have said that he was playing to get himself killed."