plodding on. The grain had to be got in if the Germans were coming, and
these fields were to be trampled as they were in 1870. Talk about the
duality of the mind--it is sextuple. I would not dare tell you all that
went through mine that long afternoon.

It was just about six o'clock when the first bomb that we could really
see came over the hill. The sun was setting. For two hours we saw them
rise, descend, explode. Then a little smoke would rise from one hamlet,
then from another; then a tiny flame--hardly more than a spark--would be
visible; and by dark the whole plain was on fire, lighting up Mareuil in
the foreground, silent and untouched. There were long lines of
grain-stacks and mills stretching along the plain. One by one they took
fire, until, by ten o'clock, they stood like a procession of huge
torches across my beloved panorama.

It was midnight when I looked off for the last time. The wind had
changed. The fires were still burning. The smoke was drifting toward
us--and oh! the odor of it! I hope you will never know what it is like.

I was just going to close up when Amelie came to the door to see if I
was all right. My mind was in a sort of riot. It was the suspense--the
not knowing the result, or what the next day might bring. You know, I
am sure, that physical fear is not one of my characteristics. Fear of
Life, dread of Fate, I often have, but not the other. Yet somehow, when
I saw Amelie standing there, I felt that I needed the sense of something
living near me. So I said, "Amelie, do you want to do me a great
service?"

She said she 'd like to try.

"Well, then," I replied, "don't you want to sleep here to-night?"

With her pretty smile, she pulled her nightdress from under her arm:
that was what she had come for. So I made her go to bed in the big bed
in the guest-chamber, and leave the door wide open; and do you know, she
was fast asleep in five minutes, and she snored, and I smiled to hear
her, and thought it the most comforting sound I had ever heard.

As for me, I did not sleep a moment. I could not forget the poor
fellows lying dead out there in the starlight--and it was such a
beautiful night.

XIV

September 8, 1914.

It was about my usual time, four o'clock, the next morning,--Sunday,
September 6,--that I opened my blinds. Another lovely day. I was
dressed and downstairs when, a little before five, the battle
recommenced.

I rushed out on the lawn and