The Coming of the English: Adventures in the Little House on the Marne

HUIRY-SUR-MARNE, September 5, 1914

YOU can get some idea of how exhausted I was on that night of Wednesday, September 2, when I tell you that I waked the next morning to find that I had a picket at my gate. I did not know it until Amélie came to get my coffee ready. She also brought me news that they were preparing to blow up the bridges on the Marne; that the postoffice had gone; that the English were cutting the telegraph wires.

While I was taking my coffee, quietly , as if it were an everyday occurrence, she said, —

‘Well, madame, I imagine that we are going to see the Germans. Père is breaking an opening into the underground passage under the stable, and we are going to put all we can out of sight. Will you please gather up what you wish to save, and it can be hidden there.’

I don’t know that I ever told you that all the hill is honeycombed with those old subterranean passages, like the one we saw at Provins. They say that they go as far as Crécy-en-Brie, and used to connect the royal palace there with one on this hill.

Naturally I gave a decided refusal to any move of that sort, so far as I was concerned. My books and portraits are the only things I should be eternally hurt to survive. To her argument that the books could be put there — there was room enough — I refused to listen. I had no idea of putting my books underground to be mildewed. Besides, if it had been possible I would not have attempted it. I felt a good deal like the Belgian refugees I had seen,—all so well dressed; if my house was going up, it was going up in its best clothes. I had just been uprooted once—a horrid operation — and I did not propose to do it again so soon. To that my mind was made up.

Later I found that, in spite of my orders, Amélie was busy putting my few pieces of silver, and such bits of china from the buffet as seemed to her valuable — her ideas and mine on that point do not jibe — into the wastepaper baskets to be hidden under ground.

I was too tired to argue. While I stood watching her there was a tremendous explosion. I rushed into the garden. The picket, his gun on his shoulder, was at the gate.

‘What was that?’ I called out to him. ‘Bridge,’ he replied. ‘The English divisions are destroying the bridges on the Marne behind them as they cross. That means that another division is over.’

I asked him which bridge it was, but of course he did not know. While I was standing there, trying to locate it by the smoke, an English officer, who looked of middle age, tall, clean-cut, came down the road on a chestnut horse, as slight, as clean-cut and well groomed as himself. He rose in his stirrups to look off at the plain before he saw me. Then he looked at me, then up at the flags flying over the gate, saw the Stars and Stripes, smiled, and dismounted.

‘American, I see,’ he said.

I told him I was.

‘Live here?’ said he.

I told him that I did.

‘Staying on?’ he asked.

I answered that it looked like it.

He looked me over a moment before he said, ‘Please invite me into your garden and show me that view.’

I was delighted. I opened the gate, and he strolled in and sauntered with a long, slow stride — a long-legged stride — out on to the lawn and right down to the hedge, and looked off.

‘Beautiful,’ he said, as he took out his field-glass, and turned up the map case which hung at his side. ‘What town is that?’ he asked, pointing to the foreground.

I told him that it was Mareuil-onthe-Marne.

‘How far off is it?’ he questioned.

I told him that it was about two miles, and Meaux was about the same distance beyond it.

‘What town is that?’ he asked, pointing to the hill.

I explained that the town on the horizon was Penchard — not really a town, only a village; and lower down, between Penchard and Meaux, were Neufmortier and Chauconin.

All this time he was studying his map.

‘Thank you. I have it,’ he said. ’ It is a lovely country, and this is a wonderful view of it, the best I have had.’

For a few minutes he stood studying it in silence — alternately looking at his map and then through his glass. Then he dropped his map, put his glasses into the case, and turned to me — and smiled. He had a winning smile, sad and yet consoling, which lighted up a bronzed face, stern and weary. It was the sort of smile to which everything was permitted.

‘Married?’ he said.

You can imagine what he was like when I tell you that I answered right up, and only thought it was funny hours after, — or at least I shook my head cheerfully.

‘You don’t live here alone?’ he asked.

‘But I do,’ I replied.

He looked at me gravely a moment, then off at the plain.

‘ Lived here long?’ he questioned.

I told him that I had lived in this house only three months, but that I had lived in France for sixteen years.

Without a word he turned back toward the house, and for half a minute, for the first time in my life, I had a sensation that it looked strange for me to BE an exile in a country that was not mine, and with no ties. For a penny I would have told him the history of my life. Luckily he did not give me time. He just strode down to the gate, and by the time he had his foot in the stirrup I had recovered.

‘Is there anything I can do for you, captain?’ I asked.

He mounted his horse, looked down at me. Then he gave me another of his rare smiles.

‘No,’ he said, ‘at this moment there is nothing that you can do for me, thank you; but if you could give my boys a cup of ten, I imagine that you would just about save their lives.’ And nodding to me, he said to the picket, ‘This lady is kind enough to offer you a cup of tea.’ Then he rode off, taking the road down the hill to Voisins.

I ran into the house, put the kettle on, ran up the road to call Amélie, and back to the arbor to set the table as well as I could. The whole atmosphere was changed. I was going to be useful.

I had no idea how many men I was going to feed. I had seen only three. To this day I don’t know how many I did feed. They came and came and came. It reminded me of hens running toward a place where another hen has found something good. It did not take me many minutes to discover that these men needed something more substantial than tea. Luckily I had brought back from Paris an emergency stock of things like biscuit, dry cakes, jam, and so forth, for even before our shops were closed there was mighty little in them. For an hour and a half I brewed pot after pot of tea, opened jar after jar of jam and jelly, and tin after tin of biscuit and cakes, and although it was hardly hearty fodder for men, they put it down with a relish. I have seen hungry men, but never anything so hungry as these boys.

I knew little about military discipline and less about the rules of active service, so I had no idea that I was letting these hungry men — and evidently hunger laughs at laws — break all the regulations of the army. Their guns were lying about in any old place; their kits were on the ground; their belts were unbuckled. Suddenly the captain rode up the road and looked over the hedge at the scene. The men were sitting on the benches, on the ground, anywhere, and were all smoking my best Egyptian cigarettes, and I was running round as happy as a queen, seeing them so contented and comfortable.

It was a rude awakening when the captain rode up the street.

There was a sudden jumping up, a hurried buckling up of belts, a grab for kits and guns, and an unceremonious cut for the gate. I heard a volley from the officer. I marked a serious effort on the part of the men to keep the smiles off their faces as they hurriedly got their kits on their backs and their guns on their shoulders, and rigidly saluting, dispersed up the hill, leaving two very straight men marching before the gate as if they never in their lives had thought of anything but picket duty.

The captain never even looked at me, but rode up the hill after his men. A few minutes later he returned, dismounted at the gate, tied his horse, and came in. I was a bit confused. But he smiled one of those smiles of his, and I got right over it.

‘Dear little lady,’ he said, ‘I wonder if there is any tea left for me?’

Was there? I should think so; and I thought to myself, as I led the way into the dining-room, that he was probably just as hungry as his men.

While I was making a fresh brew he said to me, —

‘You must forgive my giving my men Hades right before you, but they deserved it, and know it, and under the circumstances I imagine they did not mind taking it. I did not mean you to give them a party, you know. Why, if the major had ridden up that hill — and he might have —and seen that party inside your garden, I should have lost my commission and those boys got the guardhouse. These men are on active service.’

Then while he drank his tea he told me why he felt a certain indulgence for them, — these boys who were hurried away from England without having a chance to take leave of their families, or even to warn them that they were going.

‘This is the first time that they have had a chance to talk to a woman who speaks their tongue since they left England; I can’t begrudge it to them and they know it. But discipline is discipline, and if I had let such a breach of it pass they would have no respect for me. They understand. They had no business to put their guns out of their hands. What would they have done if the detachment of Uhlans we are watching for had dashed up that hill — as they might have?’

Before I could answer or remark on this startling speech there was a tremendous explosion, which brought me to my feet, with the inevitable, ‘ What ’s that ? ’

He took a long pull at his tea before he replied quietly, ‘Another division across the Marne.’

Then he went on as if there had been no interruption, —

‘This Yorkshire regiment has had hard luck. Only one other regiment in the Expedition has had worse. They have marched from the Belgian frontier, and they have been in four big actions in the retreat — Mons, Cambrai, St. Quentin, and La Fère. St. Quentin was pretty rough luck. We went into the trenches a full regiment. We came out to retreat again with four hundred men — and I left my younger brother there.’

I gasped; I could not find a word to say. He did not seem to feel it necessary that I should. He simply winked his eyelids, stiffened his stern mouth, and went right on; and I forgot all about the Uhlans.

‘At La Fère we lost our commissary on the field. It was burned, and these lads have not had a decent feed since — that was three days ago. We have passed through few towns since, and those were evacuated,—drummed out; fruit from the orchards on the roadsides is about all they have had — hardly good feed for a marching army in such hot weather. Besides, we were moving pretty fast — but in order — to get across the Marne, toward which we have been drawing the Germans, and in every one of these battles we have been fighting with one man to their ten.’

I asked him where the Germans were.

‘Can’t say,’ he replied. ‘But our aeroplane tells us that a detachment of German cavalry crossed the Marne ahead of us. Whether this is one of those flying squads they are so fond of sending ahead just to do a little terrorizing, or whether they escaped from the battle La Fère, we don’t know. I fancy the latter, as they do not seem to have done any harm or to have been too anxious to be seen,’

I need not tell you that my mind was acting like lightning. I remembered in the pause, as I poured him another cup of tea, and pushed the jampot toward him, that Amélie had heard at Voisins last night that there were horses in the woods near the canal; that they had been heard neighing in the night; and that we had jumped to the conclusion that there were English cavalry there.

I mentioned this to the captain, but for some reason it did not seem to make much impression on him; so I did not insist, as there was something which seemed more important which I had been getting up the courage to ask him. It had been on my lips all day.

I put it.

‘Captain,’ I asked, ‘do you think there is any danger in my staying here?’

He took a long drink before he answered, —

‘Little lady, there is danger everywhere between Paris and the Channel. Personally — since you have stayed until getting away will be difficult — I do not really believe that there is any reason why you should not stick it out. You may have a disagreeable time. But I honestly believe you are running no real risk of having more than that. At all events I am going to do what I can to assure your personal safety. As we understand it—no one really knows anything except the orders given out — it is not intended that the Germans shall cross the Marne here. But who knows? Anyway, if I move on, each division of the Expeditionary Force that retreats to this hill will know that you are here. If it is necessary, later, for you to leave, you will be notified and precautions taken for your safety. You are not afraid ? ’

I could only tell him, ‘Not yet’; but as we walked out to the gate I asked him if there was anything else I could do for him.

'Do you think that you could get me a couple of fresh eggs at half-past seven and let me have a cold wash-up ? ’

‘Well, rather,’ I answered, and he rode away.

At about half-past six he rode hurriedly down the hill again. He carried a slip of white paper in his hand, which he seemed intent on deciphering. As I met him at the gate he said, ‘Sorry I shall miss those eggs — I ’ve orders to move east.’ And he began to round up his men.

I foolishly asked him why. I felt as if I were losing a friend.

‘Orders,’ he answered. Then he put the slip of paper in his pocket, and leaning down, he said, ‘Before I go I am going to ask you to let my corporal pull down your flags. You may think it cowardly. I think it prudent. They can be seen a long way. It is silly to wave a red flag at a bull. Any needless display of bravado on your part would be equally foolish.’

So the corporal climbed up and pulled down the big flags, and together we marched them off to the stable.

All this time the captain had been searching in a letter-case; finally he selected an envelope from which he removed the letter, passing me the empty cover.

'I want you,’ he said, ‘to write me a letter — that address will always reach me. I shall be anxious to know how you came through, and every one of these boys will be interested. You have given them the only happy day they have had since they left home. As for meif I live — I shall sometime come back to see you. Good-bye and good luck.’

And he wheeled his horse and rode up the hill, his boys marching behind him; and at the turn of the road they all looked back and I waved my hand, and I don’t mind telling you that I got into the house as quickly as I could — and wiped my eyes. Then I cleared up the tea mess. It was n’t until the house was in order again that I put on my glasses and read the envelope that the Captain had given me: —

CAPTAIN T. E. SIMPSON,

KING’S OWN YORKSHIRE L. I.

13th Infantry Brigade,

15th Division,

BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.

And I put it carefully away in my address book until the time should come for me to write and tell ‘how I came through,'the phrase did disturb me a little.

I did not eat any supper. Food seemed to be the last thing I wanted.

I sat down in the study to read. It was about eight when I heard the gate open. Looking out, I saw a man in khaki, his gun on his shoulder, marching up the path. I went to the door.

‘Good evening, ma’am,’he said. ‘All right?’

I assured him that I was.

‘I am the corporal of the guard,’ he added. ‘The commander’s compliments, and I was to report to you that your road was picketed for the night and that all is well,'

I thanked him, and he marched away, and took up his post at the gate, and I knew that this was the commander’s way of letting me know that Captain Simpson had kept his word.

I sat up a while longer, trying to fix my mind on my book, trying not to glance round constantly at my pretty green interior, at all my books, looking so ornamental against the walls of my study, at all the portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves. In the back of my mind — pushed back as hard as I could stood the question, what was to become of all this? Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and what is more, I slept well. I was physically tired. The last thing that I saw as I closed up the house was the gleam of the moonlight on tinmuskets of the pickets pacing the road, and the first thing I heard, as I waked i suddenly at about four, was the crunching of the gravel as they still marched there.

I got up at once. It was the morning of Friday, the fourth of September. I dressed hurriedly, ran down to put the kettle on, and start the coffee, and by five o’clock I had a table spread in the road, outside the gate, with hot coffee and milk and bread and jam. I had my lesson, so I called the corporal and explained that his men were to come in relays, and when the coffee-pot was empty there was more in the house; and I left them to serve themselves, while I finished dressing. I knew that the officers were likely to come over, and one idea was fixed in my mind; I must not look demoralized. So I put on a clean white frock, white shoes and stockings, a big black bow in my hair, and I felt equal to anythingin spite of the fact that before I dressed I heard far off a boomingcould it be cannon? — and more than once a nearer explosion,—more bridges down, more English across.

It was not much after nine when two English officers strolled down the road — Captain Edwards and Major Ellison of the Bedfordshire Light Infantry. They came into the garden, and the scene with Captain Simpson of the day before was practically repeated. They examined the plain, located the towns, looked long at them with their glasses; and that being over I put the usual question, ‘Can I do anything for you?’ and got the usual answer, ‘Eggs.'

I asked how many officers there were in the mess, and he replied, ‘Five’; so I promised to forage, and away they went.

As soon as they were out of sight the picket set up a howl for baths. These Bedfordshire boys were not hungry, but they had retreated from their last battle leaving their kits in the trenches, and were without soap or towels or combs or razors. But that was easily remedied. They washed up in relays in the court at Amélie’s — it was a little more retired. As Amélie had put all her towels, and so forth, down under ground, I ran back and forward between my house and hers for all sorts of things, and, as they slopped until the road ran tiny rivulets, I had to change shoes and stockings twice. I was not conscious till afterward how funny it all was. I must have been a good deal like an excited duck, and Amélie like a hen with a duckling. When she was not twitching my sash straight, she was running about after me with dry shoes and stockings, and a chair, for fear ‘ Madame was getting too tired’; and when she was not doing that she was clapping my big garden hat on my head,’for fear Madame would get a sunstroke.’ The joke was that I did not know it was hot. I did not even know it was funny until afterward, when the whole scene seemed to have been by a sort of dual process photographed unconsciously on my memory.

When the boys were all washed and shaved and combed — and they were so larky over it — we were like old friends. I did not know one of them by name, but I did know who was married, and who had children; and how one man’s first child had been born since he left England, and no news from home because they had seen their mail-wagon burn on the battlefield; and how one of them was only twenty, and had been six years in the army, — lied when he enlisted; how none of them had ever seen war before; how they had always wanted to, and ‘Now,’ said the twenty-year-older, ‘I’ve seen itgood Lord — and all I want is to get home' ; and he drew out of his breast pocket a photograph of a young girl in all her best clothes, sitting up very straight.

When I said, ‘ Best girl ? ’ he said proudly, ‘Only one, and we were to have been married in January if this had n't happened. Perhaps we may yet, if we get home at Christmas, as they tell us we may.’

I wondered whom he meant by ‘they.’ The officers did not give any such impression.

While I was gathering up towels and things before returning to the house, this youngster advanced toward me, and said with a half-shy smile, ‘I take it you’re a lady.’

I said I was glad he had noticed it —

I did make such an effort.

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I’m not joking. I may not say it very well, but I am quite serious. We all want to say to you that if it is war that makes you and the women you live amongst so different from English women, then all we can say is that the sooner England is invaded and knows what it means to have a fighting army on her soil, and see her fields devasted and her homes destroyed, the better it will be for the race. You take my word for it, they have no notion of what war is like; and there ain’t no Englishwoman of your class could have, or would have, done for us what you have done this morning. Why, in England the common soldier is the dirt under the feet of women like you.’

I had to laugh, as I told him to wait and see how they treated them when war was there; that they probably had not done the thing simply because they never had had the chance.

‘Well,’ he answered, ‘they’ll have to change mightily. Why,our own women would have been uncomfortable and ashamed to see a lot of dirty men stripping and washing down like we have done. You have n’t looked as if you minded it a bit, or thought of anything but getting us cleaned up as quick and comfortable as possible.’

I started to say that I felt terribly flattered that I had played the rôle so well, but I knew he would not understand. Besides, I was wondering if it were true. I never knew the English except as individuals, never as a race. So I only laughed, picked up my towels, and went home to rest.

Just before noon a bicycle scout came over with a message from Captain Edwards, and I sent back by him a basket of eggs, a cold chicken, and a bottle of wine, as a contribution to the breakfast at the officers' mess; and by the time I had eaten my breakfast, the picket had been changed, and I saw no more of those boys.

During the afternoon the booming off at the east became more distinct.

It surely was cannon.

When Amélie came to help get tea at the gate, she said that a man from Voisins, who had started with the crowd that left here Wednesday, had returned. He had brought back the news that the sight on the road was simply horrible. The refugees had got so blocked in their hurry that they could move in neither direction; cattle and horses were so tired that they fell by the way; it would take a general to disentangle them. My! was n’t I glad that I had not been tempted to get into that mess!

Just after the boys had finished their tea, Captain Edwards came down the road, swinging my empty basket on his arm, to say ‘Thanks' for his breakfast. He looked at the table at the gate:-

'So the men have been having tealucky men — and bottled water! What extravagance!’

'Come in and have some, too,’ I said.

'Love to,’ he answered; and in he came.

While I was making the tea he walked about the house, looked at the pictures, examined the books. Just as the table was ready there was a tremendous explosion. He went to the door, looked off, and remarked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, ‘Another division across. That should be the last.’

‘Are all the bridges down?’ I asked. ‘All, I think, except the big railroad bridge behind you — Chalifert. That will not go until the last minute.'

I wanted to ask. ' When will it be the “last minute” — and what does the “last minute” mean?’ but what was the good ?

So we went into the dining-room. As he threw his hat on a chair and sat down with a sigh, he said, ‘You see before you a very humiliated man. About half an hour ago eight of the Uhlans we are looking for rode right into the street below you, in Voisins. We saw them, but they got away. It is absolutely our own stupidity.'

‘Well,’ I explained to him, ‘I fancy I can tell you where they are hiding. I told Captain Simpson so last night.' And I explained to him that horses had been heard in the woods at the foot of the hill since Tuesday; that there was a cartroad, rough and winding, running in toward Condé for over two miles; that it was absolutely screened by trees, had plenty of water, and not a house on it,a shelter for a regiment of cavalry. And I had the impertinence to suggest that if the picket had been extended to the road below, it would have been impossible for the Germans to get into Voisins.

‘ Not enough of us,’he replied. ‘We are guarding a wide territory, and cannot put our pickets out of sight of one another.’ Then he explained that, so far as he knew from his aeroplane men, the detachment had broken up since it was first discovered on this side of the Marne. It was reported that there were only about twenty-four in this vicinity; that they were believed to be without ammunition;and then he dropped the subject, and I did not bother him with questions that were bristling in my mind.

'That cannonading seems much nearer than it did this morning,’ I ventured a little later.

‘Possibly,’ he replied.

'What does that mean?’ I persisted. 'Sorry I can’t tell you. We men know absolutely nothing. Only three men in this war know anything of its plans,Kitchener, Joffre, and French. The rest of us obey orders, and know only what we see. Not even a brigade commander is any wiser. Once in a while the colonel makes a remark, but he is never illuminating.’

'How much risk am I running by remaining here?’

He looked at me a moment before he asked, 'You want to know the truth?'

'Yes,’I replied.

' Well, this is the situation as near as I can work it out. We infer from the work we were given to do, — destroying bridges, railroads, telegraphic communications,that an effort is to be made here to stop the march on Paris; in fact, that the Germans are not to be allowed to cross the Marne at Meaux, and march on the city by the main road from Rheims to the capital. The communications are all cut. That does not mean that it will be impossible for them to pass; they’ve got clever engineers. It means that we have impeded them and may stop them. I don’t know. Just now your risk is nothing. It will be nothing unless we are ordered to hold this hill, which is the line of march from Meaux to Paris. We have had no such order yet. But if the Germans succeed in taking Meaux and attempt to put their bridges across the Marne, our artillery, behind you there, on the top of the hill, must open fire on them over your head. In that case the Germans will surely reply by bombarding this hill.’

He drank his tea without looking to see how I took it.

I remember that I was standing opposite him, and I involuntarily leaned against the wall behind me, but suddenly thought, ‘Be careful. You’ll break the glass in the picture of Whistler’s Mother, and then you ’ll be sorry.’ It brought me up standing, and he did n’t notice. Is n’t the mind a queer thing?

He finished his tea, and rose to go. As he picked up his cap he showed me a hole right through his sleeve, —in one side, out the other, — and a similar one in his puttee, where the ball had been turned aside by the leather lacing of his boot. He laughed as he said, ‘ Odd how near a chap comes to going out, and yet lives to drink tea with you. Well, good-bye and good luck if I don’t see you again.’

And off he marched, and I went in to the library and sat down and sat very still. I pounded into myself lots of things like ‘It has n’t happened yet,’

‘Sufficient unto the day,’ and ‘What is n’t to be, won’t be,’ and found I was quite calm.

Luckily I did not have much time to myself, for I had hardly sat down quietly when there was another tap at the door and I opened to find an officer of the bicycle corps standing there.

‘Captain Edwards’s compliments,’ he said, ‘and will you be so kind as to explain to me exactly where you think the Uhlans are hidden?’

I told him that if he would come down the road a little way with me I would show him.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, holding the door. ‘You are not afraid?’

I told him that I was not.

My orders are not to expose you uselessly. Wait there a minute.’

He stepped back into the garden, gave a quick look overhead, — I don’t know what for, unless for a Taube.

Then he said, ‘ Now you will please come out into the road and keep close to the bank at the left, in the shadow.

I shall walk at the extreme right. As soon as I get where I can see the roads ahead, at t he foot of t he hill, I shall ask you to stop, and please stop at once.

I don't want you to be seen from the road below, in case any one is there. Do you understand?’

I said I did. So we went into the road and walked silently down the hill. Just before we got to the turn, he motioned me to stop and stood with his map in hand while I explained that he was to cross the road that, led into Voisins, take the cart-track down the hill, pass the washhouse on his left, and turn into the wood road on that side.

At each indication he said, ‘I have it.’ When I had explained he simply said, ‘Rough road?'

I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest weather.

‘Wooded all the way?’ he asked.

I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Condé.

‘Humph,’ he said, ‘Perfectly clear, thank you very much. Please wait right there a moment.’

He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture with his hand above his head. I turned to look up the hill also. I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal.

‘Thank you very much,’ said the captain. ‘Be so hind as to keep close to the bank.'

When I reached my gate I found some of the men of the guard dragging a big, long log down the road, and I watched them while they attached it to a tree at my gate,and swung it across to the opposite side of the road, making in that way a barrier about five feet high. I asked what that was for. ‘Captain’s orders,’ was the laconic reply. But when it was done, the corporal took the trouble to explain that it was a barricade to prevent the Germans from making a dash up the hill.

‘However,’ he added, ‘don’t you get nervous. If we chase them out it will only be a little rifle practice, and I doubt if they even have any ammunition.’

As I turned to go into the house he called after me, —

‘See here, I notice that you’ve got doors on all sides of your house. Better lock all those but this front one.’

As all the windows were barred and so could be left open, I did n’t mind; I went in and locked up. The thing was getting to be funny to me,— always doing something, and nothing happening. I suppose courage is a cumulative thing, if only one has time to accumulate, and these boys in khaki treated even the cannonading as if it were all 'in the day’s work.’

It was just dusk when the bicycle corps returned up the hill. They had to dismount and wheel their machines under the barricade, and they did so prettily, dismounting and remounting with a precision that was neat.

‘Nothing,’reported the captain.

' We could not go in far, — road too rough and too dangerous. It is a cavalry job.'

All the same, I am sure the Uhlans are there.

(To be continued.)