bit of looting on our own. First we had a
great meal of lunch-tongue, bread, wine, and stewed pears. Then we
carefully took half a dozen bottles of champagne and hid them, together
with some other food-stuffs, in the middle of a big bed of nettles. A
miscellaneous crowd of cows were wandering round the house lowing
pitifully.

We were just about to make a heroic effort at milking when the 3rd Div.
billeting officer arrived and told us that the 5th Div. H.Q. would be
that night at Bouleurs, farther back. We managed to carry off the
food-stuffs, but the champagne is probably still in the nettles. And the
bottles are standing up too.

We found the company encamped in a schoolhouse, our fat signal-sergeant
doing dominie at the desk. I made himself a comfortable sleeping-place
with straw, then went out on the road to watch the refugees pass.

I don't know what it was. It may have been the bright and clear evening
glow, but--you will laugh--the refugees seemed to me absurdly beautiful.
A dolorous, patriarchal procession of old men with white beards leading
their asthmatic horses that drew huge country carts piled with clothes,
furniture, food, and pets. Frightened cows with heavy swinging udders
were being piloted by lithe middle-aged women. There was one girl
demurely leading goats. In the full crudity of curve and distinctness of
line she might have sat for Steinlen,--there was a brownness, too, in
the atmosphere. Her face was olive and of perfect proportions; her
eyelashes long and black. She gave me a terrified side-glance, and I
thought I was looking at the picture of the village flirt in serene
flight.

I connect that girl with a whisky-and-soda, drunk about midnight out of
a tin mug under the trees, thanks to the kindness of the Divisional
Train officers. It did taste fine.

The next day (September 4th) I was attached to the Divisional Cyclists.
We spent several hours on the top of a hill, looking right across the
valley for Germans. I was glad of the rest, as very early in the morning
I had been sent off at full speed to prevent an officer blowing up a
bridge. Luckily I blundered into one of his men, and scooting across a
mile of heavy plough, I arrived breathless at the bridge, but just in
time. The bridge in the moonlight looked like a patient horse waiting to
be whipped on the raw. The subaltern was very angry. There had been an
alarm of Uhlans, and his French escort had retired from the bridge to
safer quar