“Same here—­it only stopped raining this morning.”

“It was just my luck.  And everywhere there were swollen new streams, washing away the borders of the fields as though they were lines on paper.  There were hills that ran with water from top to bottom.  Gusts of wind sent the rain in great clouds flying and whirling about, and lashing our hands and faces and necks.

“So you bet, when I had tramped to the station, if some one had pulled a really ugly face at me, it would have been enough to make me turn back.

“But when we did get to the place, there were several of us—­some more men on leave—­they weren’t bound for Villers, but they had to go through it to get somewhere else.  So it happened that we got there in a lump—­five old cronies that didn’t know each other.

“I could make out nothing of anything.  They’ve been worse shelled over there than here, and then there was the water everywhere, and it was getting dark.

“I told you there are only four houses in the little place, only they’re a good bit off from each other.  You come to the lower end of a slope.  I didn’t know too well where I was, no more than my pals did, though they belonged to the district and had some notion of the lay of it—­and all the less because of the rain falling in bucketsful.

“It got so bad that we couldn’t keep from hurrying and began to run.  We passed by the farm of the Alleux—­that’s the first of the houses—­and it looked like a sort of stone ghost.  Bits of walls like splintered pillars standing up out of the water; the house was shipwrecked.  The other farm, a little further, was as good as drowned dead.

“Our house is the third.  It’s on the edge of the road that runs along the top of the slope.  We climbed up, facing the rain that beat on us in the dusk and began to blind us—­the cold and wet fairly smacked us in the eye, flop!—­and broke our ranks like machine-guns.

“The house!  I ran like a greyhound—­like an African attacking.  Mariette!  I could see her with her arms raised high in the doorway behind that fine curtain of night and rain—­of rain so fierce that it drove her back and kept her shrinking between the doorposts like a statue of the Virgin in its niche.  I just threw myself forward, but remembered to give my pals the sign to follow me.  The house swallowed the lot of us.  Mariette laughed a little to see me, with a tear in her eye.  She waited till we were alone together and then laughed and cried all at once.  I told the boys to make themselves at home and sit down, some on the chairs and the rest on the table.

“‘Where are they going, ces messieurs?’ asked Manette.

“‘We are going to Vauvelles.’

“‘Jesus!’ she said, ’you’ll never get there.  You can’t do those two miles and more in the night, with the roads washed away, and swamps everywhere.  You mustn’t even try to.’

“’Well, we’ll go on to-morrow, then; only we must find somewhere to pass the night.’