ssured him that I was.

"I am the corporal of the guard," he added. "The commander's
compliments, and I was to report to you that your road was picketed for
the night and that all is well."

I thanked him, and he marched away, and took up his post at the gate,
and I knew that this was the commander's way of letting me know that
Captain Simpson had kept his word. I had just time while the corporal
stood at the door to see "Bedford" on his cap, so I knew that the new
regiment was from Bedfordshire.

I sat up awhile longer, trying to fix my mind on my book, trying not to
look round constantly at my pretty green interior, at all my books,
looking so ornamental against the walls of my study, at all the
portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves,
and the old sixteenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson sent me on my
last birthday, looking so stoically down from his perch to remind me how
little all these things counted. I could not help remembering at the
end that my friends at Voulangis had gone--that they were at that very
moment on their way to Marseilles, that almost every one else I knew on
this side of the water was either at Havre waiting to sail, or in
London, or shut up in Holland or Denmark; that except for the friends I
had at the front I was alone with my beloved France and her Allies.
Through it all there ran a thought that made me laugh at last--how all
through August I had felt so outside of things, only suddenly to find it
right at my door. In the back of my mind--pushed back as hard as I
could--stood the question--what was to become of all this?

Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and what is more I slept well. I was
physically tired. The last thing I saw as I closed up the house was the
gleam of the moonlight on the muskets of the picket pacing the road, and
the first thing I heard, as I waked suddenly at about four, was the
crunching of the gravel as they still marched there.

I got up at once. It was the morning of Friday, the 4th of September. I
dressed hurriedly, ran down to put the kettle on, and start the coffee,
and by five o'clock I had a table spread in the road, outside the gate,
with hot coffee and milk and bread and jam. I had my lesson, so I
called the corporal and explained that his men were to come in relays,
and when the coffee-pot was empty there was more in the house; and I
left them to serve themselves, while I finished dressing. I knew that
the offi