Then silently Nini and Yvonne crept back into the cart, covered themselves with hay and a blanket, opened an umbrella above their beads, and soon were fast asleep.  The others begged me to share their bed beneath the cart, but tormented by the thought of what had become of H., racked by the anxiety of what the future held in store, I could not resign myself to rest, and the first gray streaks of that cool September dawn found me seated on a stone, staring at the glowing embers of our watch-fire.

Again the wind shifted in our direction, bringing with it that same loathsome smell.  I shivered and pulled myself together, and after carefully scrutinizing my road-map, decided that there was just a chance of reaching Villiers before night, but only if we started at once.  This living in suspense was beginning to tell on my nerves and anything, even the assurance of dreaded misfortune, would have seemed a relief.  After the state in which we had found Barcy there was little doubt that our part of the country had been treated the same way.  Perhaps it was still in the Germans’ hands; we had no way of knowing to the contrary.

I roused the servants and told them of my intention, and in a few moments a pot of coffee was boiling on the tripod.  In spite of the early hour I did not hesitate to add a little brandy in each cup, for after twenty-four hours of continual rain a stimulant was not only necessary but welcome.  I tried to coax the dogs to take some, they seemed so wet and miserable, but they spurned my offer, and stood looking at me with most pitiful and mournful eyes.

Presently Tiger disappeared behind the wall, and a second later we heard a low growl.  With childlike temerity Nini jumped up to see what was the cause of his alarm, and then almost instantly I heard her gasp, “Un mort!”

That brought us to our feet and in a bound I was on the spot just in time to see her fearlessly approaching the prostrate form of a German soldier, the upper extremity of whose body was hidden beneath the top of a tin wash boiler.  The child raised the lid, beheld, as we did, a headless human trunk, and fell into a swoon.

We were well on our road before she came to her senses, and there were moments when I almost wished she might remain dormant until we had passed beyond the gruesome plain that stretches between Barcy and Vareddes—­now a historic battlefield.

What a weird and wonderful sight it presented that gloomy September morning.  Behind us Barcy, whose every edifice was decapitated or so degraded as to look like a gigantic sieve.  Around us and on all sides fields fairly ploughed up by shot and shell, and every fifty yards it seemed to me rose a freshly covered mound, extending as far as eye could see.  On these new-made graves were piled hundreds of red soldier caps, and here and there a hastily hewn wooden cross bearing such inscriptions as these, scrawled in lead pencil on a smooth space whittled by a jack knife: