It was at that moment that the cheerful, sympathetic French girl, seeing his dejection, uttered the simple words which were to have such momentous consequences.
“See—wait—I will gif you ze souvenir—so you remember.”
I do not know whether Slade’s mood permitted him a smile in memory of Archibald Archer at the mention of that familiar word. But I do know that he answered (rather rudely, I am afraid) that he didn’t want any souvenir.
I like to think how great things are sometimes brought about by the turn of a hair—how Columbus, for instance, all but turned back in the fateful moment when land was sighted. And I pay my tribute here to that frail, brave, cheerful little maid in devastated France, who all unknowingly muzzled that big gun forever. And here’s to the Boy Scouts of America too and all their precious lore of woodcraft.
In another five seconds Tom Slade would have been flying southward, defeated, chagrined, ashamed. But Jeanne came running out in her pretty, cheery way and handed him a charred splinter of wood.
“You know how I tell you ze house it shake when ziss beeg noise—here—you see? Ziss come zen out of ze sky where you fly up. You take ziss to Americ’ for souvenir—you see? Vive l’Amerique!”
Tom Slade held this splintered fragment down by the tiny bulb which illumined his compass.
“It flew here, you mean?”
“Out of ze sky—so.”
There was a moment’s pause, she told me—a fateful moment.