llage was unlike the general landscape, in that it had never been
beautiful. In spite of globe-trotters' sentimental gush, not all
villages of northern France were beautiful. Many were built for thrift
and for comfort and for expediency; not for architectural or natural
loveliness.

But this village of Meran-en-Laye was not merely deprived of what
beauty it once might or might not have possessed. Except by courtesy it
was no longer a village at all. It was a double row of squalid ruins,
zig-zagging along the two sides of what was left of its main street.
Here and there a cottage or tiny shop or shed was still habitable. The
rest was debris.

The church in the foreground was recognizable as such by the shape and
size of its ragged walls, and by a half-smashed image of the Virgin and
Child which slanted out at a perilous angle above its facade.

Yet, miserable as the ruined hamlet seemed to the casual eye, it was at
present a vacation-resort--and a decidedly welcome one--to no less than
three thousand tired men. The wrecked church was an impromptu hospital
beneath whose shattered roof dozens of these men lay helpless on
makeshift cots.

For the mixed American and French regiment known as the "Here-We-Comes"
was billeted at Meran-en-Laye during a respite from the rigors and
perils of the front-line trenches.

The rest and the freedom from risks, supposed to be a part of the
"billeting" system, were not wholly the portion of the "Here-We Comes."
Meran--en--Laye was just then a somewhat important little speck on the
warmap.

The Germans had been up to their favorite field sport of trying to
split in half two of the Allied armies, and to roll up each,
independently. The effort had been a failure; yet it had come so near
to success that many railway communications were cut off or deflected.
And Meran-en-Laye had for the moment gained new importance, by virtue
of a spur railway-line which ran through its outskirts and which made
junction with a new set of tracks the American engineers were
completing. Along this transverse of roads much ammunition and food and
many fighting men were daily rushed.

The safety of the village had thus become of much significance. While
it was too far behind the lines to be in grave danger of enemy raids,
yet such danger existed to some extent. Wherefore the presence of the
"Here-We-Comes"--for the paradoxical double purpose of "resting up" and
of guarding the railway Function.

Still, i