he stiffened leg had a curiously unfinished look about it, suggesting a
natural malformation. Dead only a few hours, their carcasses already
had begun to swell. The skin on their bellies was as tight as a
drumhead.

We forced the quivering mare past the two dead horses. Beyond them the
road was a litter. Knapsacks, coats, canteens, handkerchiefs, pots,
pans, household utensils, bottles, jugs and caps were everywhere. The
deep ditches on either side of the road were clogged with such things.
The dropped caps and the abandoned knapsacks were always French caps and
French knapsacks, cast aside, no doubt, for a quick flight after the
melee.

The Germans had charged after shelling the town, and then the French had
fallen back--or at least so we deduced from the looks of things. In
the debris was no object that bespoke German workmanship or German
ownership. This rather puzzled us until we learned that the Germans, as
tidy in this game of war as in the game of life, made it a hard-and-fast
rule to gather up their own belongings after every engagement, great or
small, leaving behind nothing that might serve to give the enemy an idea
of their losses.

We went by the church. Its spire was gone; but, strange to say, a small
flag--the Tricolor of France--still fluttered from a window where some
one had stuck it. We went by the taverne, or wine shop, which had a
sign over its door--a creature remotely resembling a blue lynx. And
through the door we saw half a loaf of bread and several bottles on a
table. We went by a rather pretentious house, with pear trees in front
of it and a big barn alongside it; and right under the eaves of the barn
I picked up the short jacket of a French trooper, so new and fresh from
the workshop that the white cambric lining was hardly soiled. The
figure 18 was on the collar; we decided that its wearer must have
belonged to the Eighteenth Cavalry Regiment. Behind the barn we found a
whole pile of new knapsacks--the flimsy play-soldier knapsacks of the
French infantrymen, not half so heavy or a third so substantial as the
heavy sacks of the Germans, which are all bound with straps and covered
on the back side with undressed red bullock's hide.

Until now we had seen, in all the silent, ruined village, no human
being. The place fairly ached with emptiness. Cats sat on the
doorsteps or in the windows, and presently from a barn we heard
imprisoned beasts lowing dismally. Cows were there, w