ch had been fought over in the autumn
and the crosses marking the graves of fallen soldiers did not sadden
them.

Mother Meraut sat for a long time silent, then heaved a deep sigh of
relief. "I feel like Lot's wife looking back upon Sodom and Gomorrah,"
she said. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she kissed her
finger-tips and blew the kiss toward Rheims. "Farewell, my beautiful
City!" she cried. "It is not for your sins we must leave you! And some
happy day we shall return."

There was a report, and a puff of smoke far away over the City, then
the sound of a distant explosion. The daily bombardment had begun!

"Your friends are firing a farewell salute," said Father Meraut.

All the morning they slipped quietly along between greening banks,
carried by the current farther and farther down-stream. At noon they
drew the boat ashore beneath some willow trees, where they ate their
lunch, and then spent an hour in such rest as they had not had for many
weary months.

It was then, and not until then, that Father Meraut ventured to ask
his wife her plans. "My dear," he said, as he stretched himself out in
a sunny spot and put his head in Pierrette's lap, "I have great
confidence in you, and will follow you willingly anywhere, but I should
really like to know where we are going."

Mother Meraut looked at him in surprise. "Why, haven't I told you?" she
said "My mind has been so full of it I can't believe you didn't know
that we are going to my father's, if we can get there! You know their
village is on a little stream which flows into the Aisne some distance
beyond its junction with the Vesle. We could drift down to the place
where the two rivers join, and go on from there to the little stream
which flows past Fontanelle. Then we could row up-stream to the
village."

"It's as plain as day, now you tell it," answered her husband, "and a
very good plan, too."

"You see," said Mother Meraut, as she packed away the remains of the
lunch, "I haven't heard a word from them all winter. I don't know
whether they are dead or alive. I haven't said anything about it,
because you were so ill and there were so many other worries, but this
plan has been in my mind all the time. What we shall do when we get to
Fontanelle I do not know, but we shall be no worse off than other
refugees, and at any rate we shall not be under shell-fire every day."

"If we can't find any place to stay there, why can't we go on and on
down the rive