turn was the warning word, "_Convois_." The poor houses of such
villages as continued to exist were numbered, for the first time in
their humble lives, because they were needed for military lodgings.
Notices in the German language were hardly effaced from walls of
half-ruined buildings. They had been partly rubbed out, one could see,
but the ugly German words survived, strong and black as a stain on one's
past. Huge rounds of barbed wire which had been brought, and never used,
were stacked by the roadside, and there were long lines of
trench-furniture the enemy had had to abandon in flight, or leave in
dug-outs: rough tables, chairs, rusty cooking-stoves, pots, pans, petrol
tins, and broken dishes: even lamps, torn books, and a few particularly
ugly blue vases for flowers. _They_ must have been made in Germany, I
knew!

Wattled screens against enemy fire still protected the road, and here
and there was a "camouflage" canopy for a big gun. The roofs of
beautiful old farmhouses were crushed in, as if tons of rock had fallen
on them: and the moss which once had decked their ancient tiles with
velvet had withered, turning a curious rust colour, like dried blood.
Young trees with their throats cut were bandaged up with torn linen and
bagging on which German printed words were dimly legible. It would have
been a scene of unmitigated grimness, save for last summer's
enterprising grass and flowers, which autumn, kinder than war, had not
killed.

Late roses and early chrysanthemums grew in the gardens of broken,
deserted cottages, as if the flowers yearned to comfort the wounded
walls with soft caresses, innocent as the touch of children. On the
burned facades of houses, trellised fruit-trees clung, some dead--mere
black pencillings sketched on brick or plaster--but now and then one was
living still, like a beautiful young Mazeppa, bound to a dead steed.

So we arrived at Noyon, less than two hours by car from Compiegne. The
nearness of it to the heart of France struck me suddenly. I could hear
the echo of sad voices curbing the optimists: "The Germans are still at
Noyon!"

Well--they are not at Noyon now. They've been gone for many moons. Yet
there's a look on the faces of the people in the town--a look when they
come to the windows or doors of their houses, or when they hear a sudden
noise in the street--which makes those moons seem never to have waned.

Washington has adopted Noyon, so the Becketts could not offer any gr