Paris sounded the more attractive. They gave us back our car and away we went. It was after twenty o’clock, and it was pitch dark, and it was cold, and it was raining. And the man who had made the machine had forgotten to equip it with headlights.
A little before midnight, on the downhill main street of a village, we saw ahead of us a wagon. It was two feet ahead of us. There being nothing else to do we banged into it. Then we stopped. The driver of the wagon sat suddenly down in the middle of the street and apologized. We all got out to see whether any damage had been done to the car. The only wounds discernible in the darkness were a smashed radiator and a bent axle.
“It’s lucky this happened in a town,” said I. “We can probably find a hotel.”
“We’re not going to look for one,” said Joe. “We’re going to drive to Paris.”
We got back in and, to our amazement, the darn thing started. There was plenty of headlight now, for the whole hood was ablaze. All lit up like a church, we went on our mad career until our conveyance dropped dead, overcome by the heat. This was four miles from a town that will be famous in the histories of this war.
“I guess we’re through,” said Joe. “One of us will have to stay with the car and see that nothing is stolen. The other two can go back to town and find a bed.”
By a vote of two to one, Howard was elected to stay with the car. He was the youngest.
Joe and I hiked our four miles in silence. The town was as brilliantly lighted as a cemetery and apparently void of inmates. We groped for an hour in a vain search for a hostelry. At length we gave up and resolved to sleep on the huge cathedral’s front porch. We were ascending the steps when a door opened and a human being stood before us.
“Arrested again,” thought I.
But the human being turned out to be not a copper, but a priest.