“It is the helper of us, too,” suggested old Vivier.  “More than one time, it has kept me safe when I was on patrol.  And did it not help to save us at Rache, when—­”

“The fog may have helped us, one per cent, at Rache,” admitted Mahan.  “But Bruce did ninety-nine per cent of the saving.”

“A Scotch general?” asked the recruit, as Vivier nodded cordial affirmation of Mahan’s words, and as others of the old-timers muttered approval.

“No,” contradicted Mahan.  “A Scotch collie.  If you were dry behind the ears, in this life, you wouldn’t have to ask who Bruce is.”

“I don’t understand,” faltered the rookie, suspicious of a possible joke.

“You will soon,” Mahan told him.  “Bruce will be here to-day.  I heard the K.O. saying the big dog is going to be sent down with some dispatches or something, from headquarters.  It’s his first trip since he was cut up so.”

“I am saving him—­this!” proclaimed Vivier, disgorging from the flotsam of his pocket a lump of once-white sugar.  “My wife, she smuggle three of these to me in her last paquet.  One I eat in my cafe noir; one I present to mon cher vieux, ce bon Mahan; one I keep for the grand dog what save us all that day.”

“What’s the idea?” queried the mystified rookie.  “I don’t—­”

“We were stuck in the front line of the Rache salient,” explained Mahan, eager to recount his dog-friend’s prowess.  “On both sides our supports got word to fall back.  We couldn’t get the word, because our telephone connection was knocked galley-west.  There we were, waiting for a Hun attack to wipe us out.  We couldn’t fall back, for they were peppering the hillslope behind us.  We were at the bottom.  They’d have cut us to ribbons if we’d shown our carcasses in the open.  Bruce was here, with a message he’d brought.  The K.O. sent him back to headquarters for the reserves.  The boche heavies and snipers and machine-guns all cut loose to stop him as he scooted up the hill.  And a measly giant of a German police dog tried to kill him, too.  Bruce got through the lot of them; and he reached headquarters with the Sos call that saved us.  The poor chap was cut and gouged and torn by bullets and shell-scraps, and he was nearly dead from shell-shock, too.  But the surgeon general worked over him, himself, and pulled him back to life.  He—­”

“He is a loved pet of a man and a woman in your America, I have heard one say,” chimed in Vivier.  “And his home, there, was in the quiet country.  He was lent to the cause, as a patriotic offering, ce brave!  And of a certainty, he has earned his welcome.”

When Bruce, an hour later, trotted into the trenches, on the way to the “Here-We-Come” colonel’s quarters, he was received like a visiting potentate.  Dozens of men hailed him eagerly by name as he made his way to his destination with the message affixed to his collar.

Many of these men were his well-remembered friends and comrades.  Mahan and Vivier, and one or two more, he had grown to like—­as well as he could like any one in that land of horrors, three thousand miles away from The Place, where he was born, and from the Mistress and the Master, who were his loyally worshiped gods.