ing them
that they were welcome, but that she would not guarantee that the
whole group of ruins would not fall on their heads (and everything
was as gay as if we were arranging a week-end picnic rather than a
shelter for soldiers right out of the trenches), that the adjutant
explained how it happened that, in the third year of the war, the
fighting regiments were, for the first time, retiring as far as our
hill for their repos.

He told us that almost all the cavalry had been dismounted to do
infantry work in the trenches, but their horses were stalled in the rear.
It had been found that the horses were an embarrassment so near to
the battle-front, and so it had been decided to retire them further
behind the line, and send out part of the men to keep them exercised
and in condition, giving the men in turn three weeks in the trenches
and three weeks out.

They had first withdrawn the horses to Nanteuil-le-Haudrouin a little
northwest of us, about halfway between us and the trenches in the
Foret de Laigue. But that cantonnement had not been satisfactory, so
they had retired here.

By sundown everything was arranged--four hundred horses along the
hilltop, and, they tell us, over fifteen thousand along the valley. We
were told that the men were leaving Nanteuil the next morning, and
would arrive during the afternoon.

It was just dusk on Monday when they began riding up the hill, each
mounted man leading two riderless horses.

It was just after they passed that there came a knock at the salon
door.

I opened it with some curiosity. When you are to lodge a soldier in a
house as intimately arranged as this one is, I defy anyone not to be
curious as to what the lodger is to be like.

There stood a tall, straight lad, booted and spurred, with a crop in one
gloved hand, and the other raised to his fatigue cap in salute, and a
smile on his bonny face,--as trig in his leather belted bleu de ciel tunic
as if ready for parade, and not a sign of war about him but his
uniform.

"Bon jour, madame" he said. "Permit me to introduce myself. Aspirant
B------, 23d Dragoons."

"Regular army?" I said, for I knew by the look of him that this was a
professional soldier.

"St. Cyr," he replied. That is the same as our West Point.

"You are welcome, Aspirant," I said. "Let me show you to your room."

"Thank you," he smiled. "Not yet. I only came to present myself, and
thank you in advance for your courtesy. I am in command of the