Grumbling, he produced half an inch of wax candle.

"Hurry into bed and that will last you. It's all I have."

The bed wore a coloured rug, bare and thin, an eiderdown, damp and
musty. Spreading her wet mackintosh on the top she rolled herself up as
well as she could, and developing a sort of warmth towards morning,
slept an hour or two. The daylight showed her nothing to wash in, no
jug, no basin, no bell to pull.

As no one would come to her, as there was nothing to be gained by
waiting, she got up, and going into the hall, entered a dark
coffee-room in which breakfast was served at its lowest ebb, black
coffee, sugarless, and two pieces of dry bread.

Yet, having eaten, she was able to think: "I am a soldier of five sous.
I am here to drive for the French Army." And her thoughts pleased her so
well that, at the moment when her circumstances were in their state of
least perfection, she exclaimed: "How right I was to come!" and set off
down the street to find her companions.

A mile out of the town upon the banks of a tributary of the Meuse stood
a deserted glass factory which had been converted by the French into a
garage for a fleet of thirty cars. Above the garage was a large attic
used as a dormitory for the mechanics, soldier-cooks, drivers and
clerks. In a smaller room at the end slept the non-commissioned
officers--the _brigadier_ and the two _marechaux des logis_.

A hundred yards from the factory, built upon the brink of the stream