the Battle of the Marne. Day and night, night and day the guns thundered
and crashed. I seemed when I slept to hear 'em in my dreams. They never
stopped."

"It makes me, too, think of that time, Mr. Scott, except that this is
winter and that was summer. The cloud of battle is just the same."

"But the results are much less. It's a deadlock, and has been a
deadlock for months. I don't expect anything decisive until spring, and
maybe not then. Here is a good house, Miss Julie. It looks as if the
mayor, or Chastel's banker might have lived here. Suppose we try it."

But the house had been stripped. All the rooms were cold and bare, and
in the rear a huge shell had exploded leaving yawning gaps in the walls,
through which the snow was driving fast. Julie shivered.

"Let's go away from it," she said. "I couldn't sleep in this house. It's
continually talking to us in a language I don't like to hear."

"I don't hear its talk," said John, "but I see its ghosts walking, and
I'm as anxious to get away from it as you are."

Nor were Antoine and Suzanne reluctant, and they hurried out to enter
another house which had suffered a similar fate. They passed through a
half-dozen, all torn and shattered by monster shells, and at last they
came to one which had before it a stretch of grass, a pebbled walk, a
fountain, now dry, and benches painted green, under their covering of
snow.

"An inn!" said John. "This is surely Chastel's hotel. Either the de