"What's the matter with your leg?" I asked.

The brilliant eyes flashed. "Ah!" he brought out, "One hoped--If M'sieur
le Docteur would but see. I may be cured. To be straight--to march!" He
was trembling.

Later, in the shifting sunshine at the camp door, with the odors of
hemlocks and balsams about us, the lake rippling below, I had an
examination. I found that the lad's lameness was a trouble to be cured
easily by an operation. I hesitated. Was it my affair to root this
youngster out of safety and send him to death in the _débâcle_ over
there? Yet what right had I to set limits? He wanted to offer his life;
how could I know what I might be blocking if I withheld the cure? My job
was to give strength to all I could reach.

"Philippe," I said, "if you'll come to New York next month I'll set you
up with a good leg."

In September, 1915, Dick and I came up for our yearly trip, but Philippe
was not with us. Philippe, after drilling at Valcartier, was drilling
in England. I had lurid post cards off and on; after a while I knew that
he was "somewhere in France." A grim gray card came with no post-mark,
no writing but the address and Philippe's labored signature; for the
rest there were printed sentences: "I am well. I am wounded. I am in
hospital. I have had no letter from you lately." All of which was struck
out but the welcome words, "I am well." So far then I had not cured the
lad to be killed. Then for weeks nothing. It came to be time again to go
to Canada for the hunting. I wrote the steward to get us four men, as
usual, and Lindsley and I alighted from the rattling train at the club
station in September, 1916, with a mild curiosity to see what Fate had