women and children (evidently all in their Sunday best)--packed on to
open trucks, sitting on straw, in the burning sun, without shelter,
covered with dust, hungry and thirsty. The sight set me to doing
some hard thinking after I got home that first night. But it was
not until Tuesday afternoon that I got my first hint of the truth. That
afternoon, while I was standing on the platform, I heard a drum beat in
the street, and sent Amelie out to see what was going on. She came back
at once to say that it was the garde champetre calling on the
inhabitants to carry all their guns, revolvers, etc., to the mairie
before sundown. That meant the disarming of our departement, and it
flashed through my mind that the Germans must be nearer than the
official announcements had told us.

While I stood reflecting a moment,--it looked serious,--I saw
approaching from the west side of the track a procession of wagons.
Amelie ran down the track to the crossing to see what it meant, and came
back at once to tell me that they were evacuating the towns to the north
of us.

I handed the basket of fruit I was holding into a coach of the train
just pulling into the station, and threw my last package of cigarettes
after it; and, without a word, Amelie and I went out into the street,
untied the donkey, climbed into the wagon, and started for home.

By the time we got to the road which leads east to Montry, whence there
is a road over the hill to the south, it was full of the flying crowd.
It was a sad sight. The procession led in both directions as far as we
could see. There were huge wagons of grain; there were herds of cattle,
flocks of sheep; there were wagons full of household effects, with often
as many as twenty people sitting aloft; there were carriages; there were