d in keeping the little
romance alive. For, as you remember, we had been requested--requested,
mind you, and not ordered--to march to the station with the armed escort
that would be in charge of the prisoners of war, and it had been
impressed upon us that we were to assist in guarding the convoy,
although no one of us had any more deadly weapon in his possession than
a fountain pen; and finally, according to our instructions, if any
prisoner attempted to escape in the dark we were to lay detaining hands
upon him and hold him fast.

This was all very flattering and very indicative of the esteem in which
the military authorities of Beaumont seemed to hold us. But we were not
puffed up with a sense of our new responsibilities. Also we were as a
unit in agreeing that under no provocation would we yield to temptations
to embark on any side-excursions upon the way to the railroad.
Personally I know that I was particularly firm upon this point. I would
defy that column to move so fast that I could not keep up with it.

In the black gloom we could make out a longish clump of men who stood
four abreast, scuffling their feet upon the miry wet stones of the
square. These were the prisoners--one hundred and fifty Frenchmen and
Turcos, eighty Englishmen and eight Belgians. From them, as we drew
near, an odor of wet, unwashed animals arose. It was as rank and raw as
fumes from crude ammonia. Then, in the town house of the Prince de
Caraman-Chimay just alongside, the double doors opened, and the light
streaming out fell upon the naked bayonets over the shoulders of the
sentries and made them look like slanting lines of rain.

There were eight of us by now in the party of guests, our original group
of five having been swollen by the addition of three others--the
Frenchman Gerbeaux, the American artist Stevens and the Belgian court-
photographer Hennebert, who had been under arrest for five days. We
eight, obeying instructions--no, requests--found places for ourselves in
the double files of guards, four going one side of the column and four
the other. I slipped into a gap on the left flank, alongside four of
the English soldiers. The guard immediately behind me was a man I knew.
He had been on duty the afternoon previous in the place where we were
being kept, and he had been obliging enough to let me exercise my few
words of German upon him. He grinned now in recognition and humorously
patted the stock of his rifle--this la