"Jack," said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn face, "have you got the makin's?"
He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed that he was an American.
"I have that," said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him, placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him.
The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: "And what the hell are you doin' here with them blue overalls on?"
"I come to look at the war," said McDermott.
The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry flashed through his utter exhaustion. "So you come to see the war, huh? Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair and set down, I'll have it--called--for--you--in--in--in 'n 'our--or so------"
His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Hôtel Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found liquor there.
"Frinch booze," said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of brandy and sniffing it; "but booze is booze!"
And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him.
"I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see," said McDermott.
The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing pulsations of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, or, at least, a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of railroad along which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, and was moving eastward through the town to the firing line. The men whom McDermott had seen asleep were rising at the word of command; taking their weapons, falling in, and staggering back to the interminable battle once more.
"I dunno," mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, "whether I want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close to me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' slapey m'silf."