The soldier yielded grudgingly, not knowing what else to do.  They sat down on a mossy bank beside the spring, and while the blue smoke of their cigarettes went drifting under the little trees the priest began: 

“My name is Antoine Courcy.  I am the cure of Darney, a village among the Reaping Hook Hills, a few leagues south from here.  For twenty-five years I have reaped the harvest of heaven in that blessed little field.  I am sorry to leave it.  But now this war, this great battle for freedom and the life of France, calls me.  It is a divine vocation.  France has need of all her sons to-day, even the old ones.  I cannot keep the love of God in my heart unless I follow the love of country in my life.  My younger brother, who used to be the priest of the next parish to mine, was in the army.  He has fallen.  I am going to replace him.  I am on my way to join the troops—­as a chaplain, if they will; if not, then as a private.  I must get into the army of France or be left out of the host of heaven.”

The soldier had turned his face away and was plucking the lobes from a frond of fern.  “A brave resolve, Father,” he said, with an ironic note.  “But you have not yet told me what brings you off your road, to this place.”

“I will tell you,” replied the priest, eagerly; “it is the love of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid who saved France long ago.  You know about her?”

“A little,” nodded the soldier.  “I have learned in the school.  She was a famous saint.”

“Not yet a saint,” said the priest, earnestly; “the Pope has not yet pronounced her a saint.  But it will be done soon.  Already he has declared her among the Blessed Ones.  To me she is the most blessed of all.  She never thought of herself or of a saint’s crown.  She gave her life entire for France.  And this is the place that she came from!  Think of that—­right here!”

“I did not know that,” said the soldier.

“But yes,” the priest went on, kindling.  “I tell you it was here that the Maid of France received her visions and set out to work.  You see that village below us—­look out through the branches—­that is Dom-remy, where she was born.  That spire just at the edge of the wood—­you saw that?  It is the basilica they have built to her memory.  It is full of pictures of her.  It stands where the old beech-tree, ‘Fair May,’ used to grow.  There she heard the voices and saw the saints who sent her on her mission.  And this is the Gooseberry Spring, the Well of the Good Fairies.  Here she came with the other children, at the festival of the well-dressing, to spread their garlands around it, and sing, and eat their supper on the green.  Heavenly voices spoke to her, but the others did not hear them.  Often did she drink of this water.  It became a fountain of life springing up in her heart.  I have come to drink at the same source.  It will strengthen me as a sacrament.  Come, son, let us take it together as we go to our duty in battle.”