to such a crime while on active service. Of course, no one killed that
chicken. No one ate it. No one knew anything about it. We were perfectly
willing, if need be, to pay double price for the chicken rather than have
such a term as "chicken thief" leveled at us. We of the guard, however,
protested, but paid five francs each to smooth the matter over. This
totaled about four dollars.

The next morning the whole battalion was lined up before the colonel while
the adjutant read aloud the law which we boys term the "riot act." This
document informed us very clearly that if any soldier was found to have
taken anything from the peasantry for his own use; if any man was found
drunk on active service, or if he committed any other crime or offense
which might be counted as minor to these two, the punishment for a first
offense would be six months first field punishment. For any offense of a
similar nature thereafter the man would be liable to court martial and
death.

While this paper was being read, I shook in my boots, to think that I had
been--innocently or at least ignorantly--associated with what was probably
the first crime of our battalion.

[Illustration: On our way]

We went back to billets a very subdued lot of soldiers.

Later in the day I noticed a lot of boys talking to a young Belgian girl. I
had no opportunity to speak to her then, but after a time I found her
alone, and with the little English Mademoiselle Marie B---- had picked up
from British soldiers lately billeted there, and with the small amount of
French I had stored away, we held quite a long conversation.