ewn with bay and straw. Every ten paces the earth was burned or
charred, and in some places the smoke still rose from dying campfires.
Bones, bottles and tin preserve cans in extraordinary quantities were
strewn in every direction, and a half mile before we reached the town
itself, a dead horse lay abandoned in a ditch.

At this point we were hailed by a party of bedraggled refugees who
warned us that it would be useless to try to enter Coulommiers.

"We're from Neuilly--St. Front, on our way home, but there doesn't seem
much chance of our getting any further. The place is in the hands of
the military authorities--with orders to let no one pass."

We halted, and George went on ahead and interviewed a sentry, returning
with a negative reply, and the information that Coulommiers was in a
pretty mess after the looting.

"It can't be worse than _La Ferte Gauche._" And above the almost
deafening roar of the cannon an elderly man told us bow his caravan had
been caught by the Germans, stripped of everything they possessed,
separated from their women folk, and with armed sentries back of them
had been forced to work at the building of a temporary bridge to replace
the one the French had blown up.

"I got off easy--with only a few welts from a raw-hide," he murmured,
"but my brother (and he pointed to a very stout masculine figure rolled
in a blanket and sitting motionless on the steps of an abandoned road
house)--"my brother's nearly done for! You see he's near-sighted and
not used to manual labor, and every time he missed his nail with the
hammer, the German coward would jab him in the ribs with the point of
his bayonet. Seventy-two wounds!"

"And your women?"

"God knows what they did to them! My wife hasn't stopped sobbing since
we met. She's dazed--I can't make her talk."

As he rambled on with his haphazard story, glad of fellow sympathy, I
spied a line of British Army Supply carts advancing up the road. The
leader came to a halt and getting down, the driver entered the first of
the abandoned dwellings before which we were standing. Presently he
reappeared.

"Just my luck! I say"--(and this addressed to our group with a sort of
blank, hopeless expression) "I don't suppose any of you Frenchies know
where I could get a cup of tea!"

I laughed outright, much to his astonishment.

"Not anywhere around here, unless you're willing to wait until I can
build fire enough to make you one!"

The man blushed