82 STORIES FROM DAUDET

despoiled, and with each one went
some part of France. The sun of the
long marches lay in your faded folds ;
in those marks of the balls ye kept
remembrance of the unknown dead
fallen unnoted beneath the fated
banner.
‘Hornus, it is your turn, they are
calling you, go and get your receipt.’
So there must be a receipt, after all.
The flag was before him. Yes, his
very own, the best, the most tattered
of all, and in seeing it once more, he
fancied himself up there on the railway
slope again. He heard the balls sing,
and the shells break, and the voice of
the colonel, ‘To the flag, boys!’ Then
his twenty-two comrades on the ground,
and he, the twenty-third, rushing in his
turn to lift and raise the poor flag,
fallen for want of a bearer, Ah! that
day, did he not swear to defend it, to
guard it till death? And now!...
Thinking thus, all the blood in his
heart seemed to rush to his head.