“You young cuss,” I addressed him savagely.  “Do you mean to say you have gone and got shot in that very leg I fixed up for you?”

Philippe rippled more laughter—­of pure joy—­of satisfaction.  “But, yes, M’sieur le Docteur, that leg meme.  Itself.  In a battle, M’sieur le Docteur gave me the good leg for a long enough time to serve France.  It was all that there was of necessary.  As for now I may not fight again, but I can walk and portage comme il faut.  I am capable as a guide.  Is it not, Josef?” He appealed, and the men crowded around to back him up with deep, serious voices.

“Ah, yes, M’sieur.”

“B’en capable!”

“He can walk like us others—­the same!” they assured me impressively.

Philippe was my guide this year.  It was the morning after we reached camp.  “Would M’sieur le Docteur be too busy to look at something?”

I was not.  Philippe stood in the camp doorway in the patch of sunlight where he had sat two years before when I looked over his leg.  He sat down again, in the shifting sunshine, the wooden leg sticking out straight and pathetic, and began to take the covers off a package.  There were many covers; the package was apparently valuable.  As he worked at it the odors of hemlock and balsam, distilled by hot sunlight, rose sweet and strong, and the lake splashed on pebbles, and peace that passes understanding was about us.

“It was in a bad battle in Lorraine,” spoke Philippe into the sunshiny peace, “that I lost M’sieur le Docteur’s leg.  One was in the front trench and there was word passed to have the wire cutters ready, and also bayonets, for we were to charge across the open towards the trenches of the Germans—­perhaps one hundred and fifty yards, eight arpents—­acres—­as we say in Canada.  Our big guns back did the preparation, making what M’sieur le Docteur well knows is called a rideau—­a fire curtain.  We climbed out of our trench with a shout and followed the fire curtain; so closely we followed that it seemed we should be killed by our own guns.  And then it stopped—­too soon, M’sieur le Docteur.  Very many Boches were left alive in that trench in front, and they fired as we came, so that some of us were hit, and so terrible was the fire that the rest were forced back to our own trench which we had left.  It is so sometimes in a fight, M’sieur le Docteur.  The big guns make a little mistake, and many men have to die.  Yet it is for France.  And as I ran with the others for the shelter of the trench, and as the Boches streamed out of their trench to make a counter attack with hand-grenades I tripped on something.  It was little Rene Dumont, whom M’sieur le Docteur remembers.  He guided for our camp when Josef was ill in the hand two years ago.  In any case he lay there, and I could not let him lie to be shot to pieces.  So I caught up the child and ran with him across my shoulders and threw him in the trench, and as he went in there was a cry behind me, ‘Philippe!’