.

Later on they were joined by the occupants of numerous other equipages,
all from the same district--but with whom I had but little intercourse.
From one poor woman, however, I learned that her two daughters, aged
sixteen and seventeen, had been lost from the party for two days. They
were in the cart with the curate who had stopped to water his horse,
thus losing his place in line. When they had reached the spot where the
road forked, which direction had he taken? What had become of them? She
pinned her name and route on the refectory wall, begging me to give it
to them if they ever inquired for her. To my knowledge they never
passed.

At luncheon Madame Guix announced that Yvonne was better. Far from
well, but better. That was a load off my mind.

The mother of the poor little infant we had buried was peacefully
slumbering on a cot in the hospital, and presently Leon came in to say
that old Cesar had put his hoof on the ground for the first time in four
days. Bravo! I felt much relieved.

And still the carts rolled down the valley, their noise echoing between
the hills. To-day there was no respite: right on through the heat of
noon they rumbled past, thicker and faster it seemed to me.

"Bother them!" I thought. "They make so much noise that we couldn't
hear the cannon if it were only a mile distant." And hoping that
perhaps I might seek some assurance from that sound, I was about to set
off for the highest spot in the park to listen. At the door, however, I
was accosted by one of the two men who, for several days had been
bundling my hay in the stable lofts. He pleaded illness. Would I pay
him and let him go? He would come back to-morrow and finish if he felt
better.

As there was nothing unusual in his request, I settled his account and
told him to go and rest. I now know that he was a German spy, and have
recently learned that a fortnight later he was caught and shot at
Villers-Cotterets.

I wonder what possessed me to make that long weary climb. Evidently I
found out what I wanted to know, but the news was anything but
reassuring. I heard the cannon distinctly: so distinctly that I was a
trifle unnerved. Not only had my ears caught the long ever-steady
rolling (already observed three days since) but I had been able to make
out a difference in the caliber of each piece that fired, and added to
it all was a funny clattering sound, as when one drags a wooden stick
along an iron barred fence