had
woven sheaves of dahlias and red peonies into the frame of his wheel,
and through the clump of quivering blossoms the barrel of his rifle
showed, like a black snake in a bouquet. He told us that troops were
coming behind, going to the extreme right wing--a good many thousands of
troops, he thought. Ordinarily Uhlans would have followed behind the
bicycle men, but this time a regiment of Brunswick Hussars formed the
advance guard, riding four abreast and making a fine show, what with
their laced gray jackets and their lanes of nodding lances, and their
tall woolly busbies, each with its grinning brass death's-head set into
the front of it.

There was a blithe young officer who insisted on wheeling out of the
line and halting us, and passing the time of day with us. I imagine he
wanted to exercise his small stock of English words. Well, it needed
the exercise. The skull-and-bones poison label on his cap made a
wondrous contrast with the smiling eyes and the long, humorous,
wrinkled-up nose below it.

"A miserable country," he said, with a sweep of his arm which
comprehended all Northwestern Europe, from the German border to the sea
--"so little there is to eat! My belly--she is mostly empty always. But
on the yesterday I have the much great fortune. I buy me a swine--what
you call him?--a pork? Ah, yes; a pig. I buy me a pig. He is a living
pig; very noisy, as you say--very loud. I bring him twenty kilometers
in an automobile, and all the time he struggle to be free; and he cry
out all the time. It is very droll--not?--me and the living pig, which
ride, both together, twenty kilometers!"

We took some letters from him to his mother and sweetheart, to be mailed
when we got back on German soil; and he spurred on, beaming back at us
and waving his free hand over his head.

For half an hour or so, we, traveling rapidly, passed the column, which
was made up of cavalry, artillery and baggage trains. I suppose the
infantry was going by another road. The dragoons sang German marching
songs as they rode by, but the artillerymen were dour and silent lot for
the most part. Repeatedly I noticed that the men who worked the big
German guns were rarely so cheerful as the men who belonged to the other
wings of the service; certainly it was true in this instance.

We halted two miles north of Rheims in the front line of the German
works. Here was a little shattered village; its name, I believe, was
Brimont. And he