, almost as much as they
are by bayonets. A country's readiness for war may be slight, yet the
settled habits of the peaceful Nobodies, which are not reckoned by
Imperialists when they are calculating the length of the road to
conquest, are strangely tough and obstinate. You could go to a girl at
the pigeon-hole of a booking-office in France, demand a ticket for a
place which by all the signs might then have fallen behind the van of the
German Army, and she would hand the ticket to you as though she had never
heard of the War. Then the engine-driver would go on towards the sound of
the guns till you wondered, made uneasy by the signs without, whether he
was phrenetic and intended to run the enemy down. The train would stop,
and while the passengers were listening to the shells the guard would
come along and give some advice as to the best thing to do.

A little ahead of the Germans, a train came into that junction and took
us away. I fell asleep again, and presently awoke to see a sombre orchard
outside my window of our stationary train. It was a group of trees
entranced, like a scene before the stage is occupied. The grass in the
twilight beneath the trees was rank. My sight fell drowsily to an
abandoned _kepi_, and, while wondering what had become of the man who
used to wear it, I saw a bright eye slyly shut at me. A wink in the
grass! A bearded face was laughing up at me from under the _kepi_. A
rifle with a fixed bayonet slid forward. Then I saw the orchard had a
secret crop of eyes, which smiled at us from the ground. We moved on, and
farewell kisses were blown to us.

Among the laurels of a garden beyond field batteries were in position. We
crossed a bridge over a lower road and a stream. Infantry were waiting
below for something, and from their attitudes seemed to expect it soon.
My fellow-passengers were now awake to these omens. Broad streams of
cattle undulated past our train going south, but west. "My poor Paris!"
exclaimed a French lady. It was not for themselves these people were
sorry. The common sort of people in the train were sorry for Paris, for
all their unlucky fellows. The train moved with hesitancy for hours.
During one long pause we listened to a cannonade. One burst of sound
seemed very close. A young English girl, sitting in a corner with her
infant, abruptly handed the child to her husband. She rummaged in a
travelling case with the haste of incipient panic. She produced a
spirit-lamp, a bowl,