Then we turned our eyes toward the place where we had last seen the French soldier.  We hardly dared to look.  But instead of seeing a splatter of blood and flesh upon the earth by the tree stump, we saw the soldier rise from the buck-brush where he had been ducking, and light a cigarette.  The shell had hit not a dozen feet above him, but had sprayed its fountain from him, instead of toward him.  He had some trouble lighting his cigarette and was irritated for a second at his inconvenience.  But so far as we could see, the fact that death had reached for him and missed him by inches had left no impression upon his mind.  Three years in war had wrought some deep change in him.  Was it entirely in his nerves or was it deeper than nerves, a certain calmness of soul—­or was it merely a dramatic expression of a soldierly attitude?  We did not know.  But to Henry and me, who had been rescued from death by that tree that stopped the shell headed straight for us, it seemed that we should come back after the war was over and nail a medal of honour and a war cross on the stump, and put up a statue there with an all-day program!  We had no desire to hide our fright!  It relieved us to chatter about the tablet on that tree stump!

The French soldier strolled over to us; helped to straighten out the camion, and when we learned that he was going down the hill we gave him a lift.  He was a hairy, dirty, forsaken looking poilu who, washed and shaved and classified, turned out to be an exchange professer from the Sorbonne, who had spent a year at Harvard, and it was he who told us of the bombing of the hospital at Landrecourt; we’ll call it Landrecourt to fool the censor, who thinks there is no hospital there.  At the mention of the hospital the Major turned to us and said:  “That’s where we sent that pretty red-headed nurse who came over with you on the boat.  And,” added the Major, “that is the hospital equipped by Mrs. Chesman, of New York!” whose name is also changed to fool the censor.  It was a better known name!

“Say,” exclaimed Henry, “the Aunt of the Gilded Youth!”

“You mean our ambulance boy who came over on the boat with you—­the multimillionaire?” asked the head of the American Ambulance service.

“The same,” answered Henry, who turned to me and said in his oratorical voice:  “The plot thickens.”  Then the Frenchman told us the story of the raid:  How the airmen had come at midnight, dropped their bombs, killing nurses and doctors, and how the discipline of the hospital did not even flutter.  He said that the head nurse summoned all her nurses, marched them to the abri at the rear of the hospital, and stood at the door of the abri, while the girls filed in, and just as the last nurse was going into the dugout with the head nurse standing outside, the airmen dropped a bomb upon her and erased her!  None of the nurses inside was hurt.  Two doctors were killed and a number of patients.  Landrecourt was on our way and we hurried to it.