upper part of his khaki blouse was dark-brown with wet and, under his blouse, his shirt What had I better do? If we hung his clothes by the fire, they might perhaps dry out. I confess I didn't even think of letting the boy start back as he was.

The farmer stood there, without speaking, looking at us one after the other. I had read his name on the billet: it was something like Issartel or Issarles.

"Would you mind if the soldier dried out his clothes? If there's no one about...

M. Issarles started.

"No, of course not. The missus is busy out there with the cows. She won't come in for awhile. Anyway, I'll go tell her. Take off your clothes, boy, and sit in front of the fire."

He walked to the far end of the room and went out. I could hear from nearby the muffled sounds of a well-stocked cow shed.

Yvon slipped off his blouse and shirt. He had been wearing nothing else under them and was now bare to the waist a nice, boyish torso, hairless, with two little pinkish-brown nipples. His shoulders and arms were more muscular that I'd have thought.

'Get close to the fire. We'll find something to hang all that on." Yvon sat down on a chair, arms folded on his chest. The flames cast a changing, golden light on his skin. While I was taking off my overcoat (at long last!) it occurred to me how little I knew about the kid, only that his Frenchborn parents, who were in the civil service in French Equatorial Africa, had made him enlist the year before, when he was eighteen, and now seemed to be losing interest in him completely. M. Issarles came back and interrupted my thoughts. On seeing the half-naked soldier, he stopped dead for an instant, then silently began hanging our overcoats and Yvon's blouse and shirt on a drying-rack and on the backs of chairs.

"I'll bet your feet are wet," he said. "Pull off your shoes."

He had spoken half-leaning over the boy and I saw his hand hover a moment above the bare shoulder, hesitate, and finally move away.

"You too, Lieutenant. Take off your shoes. I'll take care of them." "Aren't you afraid the leather . . . ?"

"Don't worry. An old cavalryman knows what to do with wet leather." He went again to the back of the room and soon returned with a big fistful of hay. While he was methodically stuffing it into my shoes, he kept watching Yvon remove his.

"Take your socks off too, boy. I'll give you my wife's galoches.* Mine'll fit you, Lieutenant."

"I always thought I was tall," I said, "but you dwarf me. How tall are you?" "Stood six foot three and a half the day of my physical and not much less now," he said, straightening up.

"More than three inches taller than I. You said 'cavalryman' a minute ago. You must have been a cuirassier."

"That's right, Lieutenant. 7th Regiment of Cuirassiers."

Yvon had raised his head and was looking at him with interest. The veteran noticed it. He went over to a chest of drawers standing in the shadow and brought back a heavy, red-velvet-covered frame with metal corners in which was a full-length photograph of a very handsome cuirassier.

He started to show it to Yvon, but caught himself up and handed it to me. "You'll see it afterwards, young fellow."

Then, facing me:

"In those days, I tell you, soldiers were men!"

"Not all of them, Monsieur Issarles, surely not all of them! You're not going to make me believe the whole French army was as tall as you."

"No, we had many a Marie-Louise** too. But I never did see a kid like this. Look, Lieutenant, if there was a war, would you have the heart to lead him out to get himself killed?"

I was a little taken aback and tried to find the right thing to say, but my