We had bought the outfit that morning and we were to lose it that night.
The horse was an aged mare, with high withers, and galls on her
shoulders and fetlocks unshorn, after the fashion of Belgian horses; and
the dogcart was a venerable ruin, which creaked a great protest at every
turn of the warped wheels on the axle. We had been able to buy the two--
the mare and the cart--only because the German soldiers had not thought
them worth the taking.

In this order, then, we proceeded. Pretty soon the mare grew so weary
she could hardly lift her shaggy old legs; so, footsore as we were, we
who rode dismounted and trudged on, taking turns at dragging her forward
by the bit. I presume we went ahead thus for an hour or more, along an
interminable straight road and past miles of the checkered light and
dark green fields which in harvest time make a great backgammon board of
this whole country of Belgium.

The road was empty of natives--empty, too, of German wagon trains; and
these seemed to us curious things, because there had until then been
hardly a minute of the day when we were not passing soldiers or meeting
refugees.

Almost without warning we came on this little village called Montignies
St. Christophe. A six-armed signboard at a crossroads told us its name
--a rather impressive name ordinarily for a place of perhaps twenty
houses, all told. But now tragedy had given it distinction; had painted
that straggling frontier hamlet over with such colors that the picture
of it is going to live in my memory as long as I do live. At the upper
end of the single street, like an outpost, stood an old chateau, the
seat, no doubt, of the local gentry, with a small park of beeches and
elms round it; and here, right at the park entrance, we had our first