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Rh reached down into the tool house and took up one of the kittens, holding it out in the light to see it blink its eyes. The little girl, just coming out of the kitchen, uttered a shrill scream, a really terrible scream, and squatted down, covering her face with her hands. Madame Joubert came out to chide her.

“What is the matter with that child?” Claude asked as they hurried out of the gate. “Do you suppose she was hurt, or abused in some way?”

“Terrorized. She often screams like that at night. Haven’t you heard her? They have to go and wake her, to stop it. She doesn’t speak any French; only Walloon. And she can’t or won’t learn, so they can’t tell what goes on in her poor little head.”

In the two weeks of intensive training that followed, Claude marvelled at Gerhardt’s spirit and endurance. The muscular strain of mimic trench operations was more of a tax on him than on any of the other officers. He was as tall as Claude, but he weighed only a hundred and forty-six pounds, and he had not been roughly bred like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned that he was a violinist by profession, that he could have had a soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp entertainments, they no longer resented his reserve or his occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have wriggled out and didn’t.