y gave out. The _maire_ was
informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in
twenty-four hours he would be shot. The little man replied quietly:
"M'eteindre, ce n'est pas allumer le gaz." This illuminating remark
appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant's mind, and
although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all
called up to the colours) the _maire_ was not molested. It was here
that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch)
of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in
amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who,
having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a
horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became of
him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected. The Huns
have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders
and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a
cruel death.

At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne,
approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible
for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn--a dish of perch caught
that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for
which La Ferte is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and
excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands,
and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town.
The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much
frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous
losses on the pigs of La Ferte. It reminded me of the satirical
headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great
slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize--"Les
Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had
saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far
more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the
Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the
cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see
the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love
are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment
meted out by a German officer, a certain von Buelow, who was