The calamitous quality of a great world tragedy is that it brings to so many helpless little folk bitter and ignoble tragedies of shame and humiliation and misunderstanding.  With a few racial exceptions, Our Square was vehemently pro-Ally.  In spirit we fought with valiant France and prayed for heroic Belgium.  What a Godspeed we gave to the few sons of Gaul who, in those early days, left us to fight the good fight!  How sourly we looked upon Plooie continuing his peaceful rounds.  Whence arose the rumor, I cannot say, but it was noised about just at that time of wrath and tension that Plooie was born in Liege.  Liege, that city of fire and slaughter and heroism, upon which the eyes and hopes of the world were turned in wonder and admiration.  Somebody had seen the entry on the marriage register!  The Bonnie Lassie told me of it, pausing at my bench with a little furrow between her bright eyes.

“Dominie, you know Emile Garin pretty well?”

“Not at all,” I replied, failing to identify the rickety Plooie by his rightful name.

“Of course you do!  Never a morning but he stops at your bench and asks if you have an umbrella to mend.”

“I never have.  What of him?”

“Have you any influence with him?”

“Not compared with yours.”

The Bonnie Lassie made a little gesture of despair.  “I can’t find him.  And Annie Oombrella won’t tell me where he is.  She only cries.”

“That’s bad.  You think he—­he is—­”

“Why don’t you say it outright, Dominie? You think he’s hiding.”

“Really!” I expostulated.  “You come to me with accusations against the poor fellow and then undertake to make me responsible for them.”

“I don’t believe it’s true at all,” averred the Bonnie Lassie loyally.  “I don’t believe Plooie is a coward.  There’s some reason why he doesn’t go over and help!  I want to know what it is.”

Perceiving that I was expected to provide excuses for the erring one, I did my best.  “Over age,” I suggested.

“He’s only thirty-two.”

“Bless me!  He looks sixty.  Well—­physical infirmity.”

“He can carry a load all day.”

“He won’t leave Annie Oombrella, then.  Or perhaps she won’t let him.”

“When I asked her, she cried harder than ever and said that her mother was French and she would go and fight herself, if they’d have her.”

“Then I give it up.  What does your Olympian wisdom make of it?”

“I don’t know.  But I’m afraid the Garins are going to have trouble.”

Within a few days Plooie reappeared and his strident falsetto appeal for trade rang shrill in the space of Our Square.  Trouble developed at once.  Small boys booed at him, called him “yellow,” and advised him to go carefully, there was a German behind the next tree.  Henri Dumain, our little old French David who fought the tragic duel of tooth and claw with his German Jonathan in Thornsen’s