The colonel of the battalion took the message from the runner's hand.
It contained seven words:
"_As an example to the battalion._
"CAMPBELL."
"What's that noise?"
"Sounds like Mills bombs," said the adjutant.
"And revolvers," muttered the colonel, and swore softly to himself with
a lip that quivered strangely.
X
If ever you go to the Cobalt country, do not fail to take the boat to
Ville Marie, on the blue shores of Pontiac.
There is an excellent hostelry at Ville Marie called "Les Voyageurs,"
where a little lady, known as Petite Simunde, has worked wonders in
making it the cosiest, snuggest, neatest little place that ever warmed
the heart of a lumberjack or a mining-prospector. At night her husband
leads the singing with a mighty voice that shakes the rafters; for did
not the former proprietor, Pierre Generaud, say that singing encouraged
thirst?
At times, when Madame Des Rosiers is away for a day, Jacque Noir will
regale his old friends with tales of his past life, stories that differ
with every telling, and seem to indicate that the narrator himself is
beginning to doubt their accuracy. At these times, too, he has been
known to sing of a sailor who loved a Portuguese maid; but at the first
sound of his wife's footsteps outside Monsieur Des Rosiers is the model
husband, a _rôle_, to be frank, which suits him quite well.
When the snow is very thick on the ground, and the wind howls
mournfully over the lake, Jacque Noir talks of France and the weary
years of war. He will point with pride to his artificial foot, and then
to his decoration, and slowly tell how two men went out into the dark
after a machine-gun post.
And when the guests are gone and the fire is low, when the wind is
moaning quietly, while the snow falls thick--thick--thick--they speak
to each other of the officer who will never come back; of the one whose
hair was brown, almost like red; whose blue eyes were stern, and yet so
kind.
Hand-in-hand they sit close together, and the only sounds are those of
the crackling logs and the wind that is never still.