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Page 30
Rafael--l'Hirondelle--explained. He had not been killed, but captured
and sent to a German prison-camp.
"You escaped?" the colonel threw in.
"But yes, my colonel."
The colonel laughed. "One would know it. The clumsy Boches could not
hold the Swallow."
"But no, my colonel."
"Go on."
"One went to work before light, my colonel, in that accursed
prison-camp. One was out of sight from the guard for a moment, turning a
corner, so that on a morning I slipped into some bushes and hid in a
dugout--for it was an old camp--all day. That night I walked. I walked
for seven nights and lay hid for seven days, eating, my colonel, very
little. Then, _v'la_, I was in front of the French lines."
"You ran across to our lines?"
"But not exactly. One sees that I was yet in dirty German prison
clothes, and looked like an infantryman of the Boches, so that a poilu
rushed at me with a bayonet. I believed, then, that I had come upon a
German patrol. Each thought the other a Hun. I managed to wrest from the
poilu his rifle with the bayonet, but as we fought another shot me--in
the side."
"You were wounded?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"In hospital?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"How long?"
"Three months, my colonel."
"Why are you not again in the army?"
The face of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly
the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the
stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I--was
discharged, my colonel, as--unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped
into his hands suddenly, and he broke beyond control into sobs that
shook not only him but every man there.
The colonel stepped forward and put an arm around the bent shoulders.
"_Mon h�ros!_" said the colonel.
With that Rafael found words, never a hard task for him. Yet they came
with gasps between. "To be cast out as an old horse--at the moment of
glory! I had dreamed all my life--of fighting. And I had it--oh, my
colonel--I had it! The glory came when I was old and knew how to be
happy in it. Not as a boy who laughs and takes all as his right. I was
old, yes, but I was good to kill the vermin. I avenged the children and
the women whom those savages--My people, the savages of the wood, knew
no better, yet they have not done things as bad as these vile ones who
were educated, who knew. Therefore I killed them. I was old, but I was
strong, my colonel knows. Not for nothing have I lived a hard life. _On
a vu de la mis�re_. I have hunted moose and bear and kept my muscles of
steel and my eyes of a hawk. It is in my blood to be a fighting man. I
fought with pleasure, and I was troubled with no fear. I was old, but I
could have killed many devils more. And so I was shot down by my own
friend after seven days of hard life. And the young soldier doctor
discharged me as unfit to fight. And so I am come home very fast to hide
myself, for I am ashamed. I am finished. The fighting and the glory are
for me no more."
The colonel stepped back a bit and his face flamed. "Glory!" he
whispered. "Glory no more for the Hirondelle? What of the Croix de
Guerre?"
Rafael shook his head. "I haf heard my colonel who said they would have
given me--me, the Hirondelle--the war cross. That now is lost too."
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