By which statement the responsibility of landing record trout was on my shoulders.  I thought I would have a return whack.  My hands in the snarly flies and my back to Philippe I spoke around my pipe, yet spoke distinctly.

“Why aren’t you in France fighting?”

The canoe shivered down its length as if the man at its stern had jumped.  There was a silence.  Then Philippe’s deep, boyish voice answered.

“As M’sieur sees, one is lame.”

I felt a hotness emerging from my flannel collar and rushing up my face as I bent over that damned Silver Doctor that wouldn’t loose its grip on the Black Hackle.  I didn’t see the Black Hackle or the Silver Doctor for a moment.  “Beg pardon,” I growled.  “I forgot.”  I mumbled platitudes.

“M’sieur le Docteur has right,” Philippe announced unruffled.  “One should fight for France.  I have tried to enlist, there are three times, explaining that I am ‘capable’ though I walk not evenly.  But one will not have me.  Therefore I have shame, me.  I have, naturally, more shame than another because of Jeanne.”

“Because of Jeanne?” I repeated.  “Who is Jeanne?”

There was a pause; a queer feeling made me slew around.  Philippe’s old felt hat was being pulled off as if he were entering a church.

“But—­Jeanne, M’sieur,” he stated as if I must understand.  “Jeanne d’Arc. Tiens—­the Maid of France.”

“The Maid of France!” I was puzzled.  “What has she to do with it?”

“But everything, M’sieur.”  The vivid eyes flamed.  “M’sieur does not know, perhaps, that my grandfather fought under Jeanne?”

“Your grandfather!” I flung it at him in scorn.  The man was a poor lunatic.

“But yes, M’sieur.  My grandfather, lui-meme.”

“But, Philippe, the Maid of Orleans died in 1431.”  I remembered that date.  The Maid is one of my heroic figures.

Philippe shrugged his shoulders.  “Oh—­as for a grandpere!  But not the grandpere a present, he who keeps the grocery shop in St. Raymond.  Certainly not that grandfather.  It is to say the grandpere of that grandpere.  Perhaps another yet, or even two or three more.  What does it matter?  One goes back a few times of grandfathers and behold one arrives at him who was armorer for the Maid—­to whom she gave the silver stirrup.”

“The silver stirrup.”  My Leonard rod bumped along the bow; my flies tangled again in the current.  I squirmed about till I faced the guide in the stern.  “Philippe, what in hell do you mean by this drool of grandfathers and silver stirrups?”