"Why," she exclaimed, "it is General Le Cazeau!"
"Then confound General Le Cazeau!" was my inhospitably cry.
He was, I saw when he drew close, a person of stately dignity, as
indeed the hero who had saved Merlancourt and broken that last furious,
desperate, senseless onslaught of the Boches ought by rights to be.
Perhaps his splendor made me nervous. At any rate, my conscience smote
me. I remembered with sudden panic all my manifold transgressions,
beginning with the hour when I had chucked reason overboard and had
deliberately concealed a murdered man's body beneath a heap of straw.
"I believe," I gasped, "that this is an informal court martial. Nobody
could do the things I have done and be allowed to live. Still, I don't
see why they cured me if they were going to hang or shoot me."
I struggled up with the help of my crutches and stood waiting my doom.
The group had paused before us, and presentations followed, throughout
which the master of ceremonies was the Firefly of France. Then the
gray-headed general fixed me with a keen, stern gaze rather like an
eagle's.
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