ble ruin of her stock and fixtures. All about her on the floor
was a litter of foul straw, muddied by many feet and stained with
spilled drink. The stench from a bloated dead cavalry horse across the
road poisoned the air. The woman said a party of private soldiers,
straying back from the main column, had despoiled her, taking what they
pleased of her goods and in pure vandalism destroying what they could
not use.

Her shop was ruined, she said. With a gesture of both arms, as though
casting something from her, she expressed how utter and complete was her
ruin. Also she was hungry--she and her children--for the Germans had
eaten all the food in the house and all the food in the houses of her
neighbors. We could not feed her, for we had no stock of provisions
with us; but we gave her a five-franc piece and left her calling down
the blessings of the saints on us in French-Flemish.

The sister village of Merbes-le-Chateau, another kilometer farther on,
revealed to us all its doors and many of its windows caved in by blows
of gun butts and, at the nearer end of the principal street, five houses
in smoking ruins. A group of men and women were pawing about in the
wreckage, seeking salvage. They had saved a half-charred washstand, a
scorched mattress, a clock and a few articles of women's wear; and these
they had piled in a mound on the edge of the road.

At first, not knowing who we were, they stood mute, replying to
questions only with shrugged shoulders and lifted eyebrows; but when we
made them realize that we were Americans they changed. All were ready
enough to talk then; they crowded about us, gesticulating and
interrupting one another. From the babble we gathered that the German
skirmishers, coming in the strength of one company, had found an English
cavalry squad in the town. The English had swapped a few volleys with
them, then had fallen back toward the river in good order and without
loss.

The Germans, pushing in, had burned certain outlying houses from which
shots had come and burst open the rest. Also they had repeated the trick
of capturing sundry luckless natives and, in their rush through the
town, driving these prisoners ahead of them as living bucklers to
minimize the danger of being shot at from the windows.

One youth showed us a raw wound in his ear. A piece of tile, splintered
by an errant bullet, had pierced it, he said, as the Germans drove him
before them. Another man told us his fat