Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/50

 "Nearer and nearer the fiery thing floated."

ESSIEURS les Americains, dead on the field of honor, I salute you!" Jules de Grandin drew himself rigidly to attention and raised his cupped hand to his right temple in a smart military salute before the Victory Monument in our city park.

The act was so typical of the little Frenchman that I could not forbear a smile as I glanced covertly at him. Ten thousand times a day friends and neighbors—even relatives—of the gold-starred names on the honor roll of that monument passed through the park, yet of all the passers-by Jules de Grandin was the only one who habitually rendered military honors to the cenotaph each time his steps led past it.

His sharp little blue eyes caught the flicker of my smile as we turned from the memorial, and the heat lightning flash of resentment rose in them. "Ha, do you laugh at my face, Friend Trowbridge?" he demanded sharply. "Cordieu, I tell you, it would be well for your country if more persons paid honor to the brave lads who watered the fields of France with their blood that Freedom might survive! So busy you are in this peaceful land that you have no time to remember the wounds and blood and broken bodies which bought that peace; no time to remember how the sale boche

"Misère de Dieu, what have we here?" One of his white, womanish hands grasped me so sharply by the arm that I winced under the pressure. His free hand pointed dramatically down the curving, shrub-bordered path before us.

"Eh?" I demanded. "What the deuce?" I swallowed the