g fog
permitted me to see the waving boughs of a tree that hung over the house
that was, outlined against a clear sky. At my feet, sticking out of the
pile of bricks and stones, was the twisted iron fragments that was once
the frame of a child's bed. I climbed out into the sunshine.

I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was
profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked
trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I
understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the
broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained
of nine-tenths of Gerbeviller.

I wandered along to where the street turned abruptly. There the ground
pitched more sharply to the little river. There stood an entire half of
a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that
often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact.
Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there
stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin
stretching below her.

"You are lucky," I said. "You still have your home."

She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I
judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn't her home, she explained.
Her home was "la-bas"--pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived
there fifty years--now it was burned. Her son's house for which he had
saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but
then her son was dead, so what did it matter? Yes, he was shot on the
day the Germans came. He was ill, but they killed him. Oh, yes, she saw
him killed. When the Germans went away she came to this house and built
a fire in the stove. It was very cold.

And why were the houses burned? No; it was not the result of
bombardment. Gerbeviller was not bombarded until after the houses were
burned. They were burned by the Germans systematically. They went from
house to house with their torches and oil and pitch. They did not
explain why they burned the houses, but it was because they were angry.

The old woman paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in
the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her to continue her story.

"You said because they were angry," I prompted. The smile broadened. Oh,
yes, they were very angry, she explained. They did not even make the
excuse that the villagers fired upon them. The