cenotaph to the dead, constructed at cross-roads by military
engineers. The driver pointed to the village of Penchard, which had
been pillaged and burnt by the enemy. It was only about a mile off,
but in the strong, dazzling light we could distinguish not the least
sign of damage. Then we came to a farm-house by the roadside. It
was empty; it was a shell, and its roof was damaged. The Germans
had gutted it. They had taken away its furniture as booty. (What they
intended to do with furniture out of a perfectly mediocre farm-house,
hundreds of miles from home, it is difficult to imagine.) Articles which
it did not suit them to carry off they destroyed. Wine-casks of which
they could not drink the wine, they stove in. ... And then they
retreated.

This farm-house was somebody's house, just as your home is
yours, and mine mine. To some woman or other every object in it
was familiar. She glanced at the canister on the mantelpiece and
said to herself: "I really must clean that canister to-morrow." There
the house stood, with holes in its roof, empty. And if there are half a
million similarly tragic houses in Europe to-day, as probably there
are, such frequency does not in the slightest degree diminish the
forlorn tragedy of that particular house which I have beheld.

At last Barcy came into view--the pierced remains of its church
tower over the brow of a rise in the plain. Barcy is our driver's show-
place. Barcy was in the middle of things. The fighting round Barcy
lasted a night and a day, and Barcy was taken and retaken twice.

"You see the new red roofs," said the driver as we approached. "By
those new red roofs you are in a state to judge a little what the
damage was."