drummed out of the towns on the other side of the Marne, that is to
say, the near-by towns, like those in the plain, and on the hilltops from
which the Germans were driven before the 10th--began to return on
that night; less than a fortnight after they fled. It was unbelievable to
me when I saw them coming back.

When they were drummed out, they took a roundabout route, to
leave the main roads free for the army. They came back over the
route nationale. They fled en masse. They are coming back slowly, in
family groups. Day after day, and night after night the flocks of sheep,
droves of cattle, carts with pigs in them, people in carts leading now
and then a cow, families on foot, carrying cats in baskets, and leading
dogs and goats and children, climb the long hill from Couilly, or thread
the footpaths on the canal.

They fled in silence. I remember as remarkable that no one talked. I
cannot say that they are coming back exactly gaily, but, at any rate,
they have found their tongues. The slow procession has been
passing for a fortnight now, and at almost any hour of the day, as I sit
at my bedroom window, I can hear the distant murmur of their voices
as they mount the hill.

I can't help thinking what some of them are going to find out there in
the track of the battle. But it is a part of the strange result of war,
borne in on me by my own frame of mind, that the very fact that they
are going back to their own hearths seems to reconcile them to
anything.

Of course these first people to return are mostly the poorer class,
who did not go far. Their speedy return is a proof of the morale of the