days. I can't make out whether he had
no realization of actual danger, or whether that was his way of
meeting it. Anyway, he disappeared on the morning the battle began,
September 5, and did not return for several days. His old wife had
made up her mind that the Germans had got him, when one morning
he turned up, tired, pale, and hungry, and not in any state to explain
his absence.

It was some days before his wife could get the story out of him. He
owns a field about halfway between Voisins and Mareuil, close to the
route de Pave du Roi, and on the morning that the battle began he
was digging potatoes there. Suddenly he saw a small group of
horsemen riding down from the canal, and by their spiked helmets he
knew them for Germans.

His first idea, naturally, was to escape. He dropped his hoe, but he
was too paralyzed with fear to run, and there was nothing to hide
behind. So he began walking across the field as well as his trembling
old legs would let him, with his hands in his pockets.

Of course the Uhlans overtook him in a few minutes, and called out to
him, in French, to stop. He stopped at once, expecting to be shot
instantly.

They ordered him to come out into the road. He managed to obey. By
the time he got there terror had made him quite speechless.

They began to question him. To all their questions he merely shook
his head. He understood well enough, but his tongue refused its
office, and by the time he could speak the idea had come to him to
pretend that he was not French--that he was a refugee--that he did
not know the country,--was lost,--in fact, that he did not know
anything. He managed to carry it off, and finally they gave him up as
a bad job, and rode away up the hill towards my house.

Then he had a new panic. He did not dare go home. He was afraid
he would find them in the village, and that they would find out he had
lied and harm his old wife, or perhaps destroy the town. So he had
hidden down by the canal until hunger drove him home. It is a simple
tale, but it was a rude experience for the old man, who has not got
over it yet.

I am afraid all this seems trivial to you, coming out of the midst of this
terrible war. But it is actually our life here. We listen to the cannon in
ignorance of what is happening. Where would be the sense of my
writing you that the battle-front has settled down to uncomfortable
trench work on the Aisne; that Manoury is holding the line in front of
us from Compie