“It is not comme il faut, M’sieur le Docteur, that a man whose very grandfather fought for Jeanne should fail France now in her need.  Jeanne, one knows, was the saviour of France.  Is it not?” I agreed.  “It is my inheritance, therefore, to fight as my ancient grandfather fought.”  I looked at the lame boy, not knowing the repartee.  He began again.  “Also I am the only one of the family proper to go, except Adolphe, who is not very proper, having had a tree to fall on the lungs and leave him liable to fits; and also Jacques and Louis are too young, and Jean Baptiste he is blind of one eye, God knows.  So it is I who fail!  I fail!  Jesus Christ!  To stay at home like a coward when France needs men!”

“But you are Canadian, Philippe.  Your people have been here two hundred years.”

“M’sieur, I am of France.  I belong there with the fighting men.”  His look was a flame, and suddenly I know why he was firing off hot shot at me.  I am a surgeon.

“What’s the matter with your leg?” I asked.

The brilliant eyes flashed.  “Ah!” he brought out, “One hoped—­If M’sieur le Docteur would but see.  I may be cured.  To be straight—­to march!” He was trembling.

Later, in the shifting sunshine at the camp door, with the odors of hemlocks and balsams about us, the lake rippling below, I had an examination.  I found that the lad’s lameness was a trouble to be cured easily by an operation.  I hesitated.  Was it my affair to root this youngster out of safety and send him to death in the debacle over there?  Yet what right had I to set limits?  He wanted to offer his life; how could I know what I might be blocking if I withheld the cure?  My job was to give strength to all I could reach.

“Philippe,” I said, “if you’ll come to New York next month I’ll set you up with a good leg.”

In September, 1915, Dick and I came up for our yearly trip, but Philippe was not with us.  Philippe, after drilling at Valcartier, was drilling in England.  I had lurid post cards off and on; after a while I knew that he was “somewhere in France.”  A grim gray card came with no post-mark, no writing but the address and Philippe’s labored signature; for the rest there were printed sentences:  “I am well.  I am wounded.  I am in hospital.  I have had no letter from you lately.”  All of which was struck out but the welcome words, “I am well.”  So far then I had not cured the lad to be killed.  Then for weeks nothing.  It came to be time again to go to Canada for the hunting.  I wrote the steward to get us four men, as usual, and Lindsley and I alighted from the rattling train at the club station in September, 1916, with a mild curiosity to see what Fate had provided as guides, philosophers and friends to us for two weeks.  Paul Sioui—­that was nice—­a good fellow Paul; and Josef—­I shook hands with Josef; the next face was a new one—­ah, Pierre Beaurame—­one calls one’s self that—­on s’appelle comme ca.  Bon jour! I turned, and got a shock.  The fourth face, at which I looked, was the face of Philippe Martel.  I looked, speechless.  And with that the boy laughed.  “It is that M’sieur cannot again cure my leg,” answered Philippe, and tapped proudly on a calf which echoed with a wooden sound.