to one of the windows, under which my eyes had caught the glint
of a small, sparkling thing: but I had my reward, for the sparkling
thing was a lovely bit of sapphire-blue glass from the robe of some
saint, and the little lady was grateful for the gift as if it had been a
real jewel--indeed, more grateful. "I'll keep it with my souvenirs of
Jim," she said, "for his eyes have looked on it: and it's just the
colour of yours which he loved. He'd be pleased that you found it for
me." (Ah, if she knew! I can't help praying that she never may know,
though such prayers from me are almost sacrilege.)

A little farther on--as the motor, not the crow, flies--we came to
Nesle, or what once was Nesle. The ghost of the twelfth-century church
looms in skeleton form above one more Pompeii among the many forced by
the Germans upon France: but save for that towering relic of the past
there's little left of this brave town of the Somme, which was historic
before the thirteenth century. It gave its name to a famous fighting
family of feudal days: and through the last heiress of the line--a
beauty and a "catch"--a certain Seigneur de Nesle became Regent of
France, in the second Crusade of Louis XII--"Saint Louis." Later ladies
of the line became dear friends of another Louis, fifteenth of the name,
who was never called saint. Not far from Nesle, Henry V of England
crossed the Somme and won the Battle of Agincourt. But now, the greatest
dramatic interest is concentrated in the cemetery!

We had heard of it at Compiegne and the wild things that had happened
there: so after a look at the ruined church, and the once charming
_Place_, we went straight to the town burial-place, and our unofficial
guide was the oldest man I ever saw. He had lurked rather than lived,
through months of German barbarity at Nesle, guarding a bag of money
he'd hidden underground. An officer from Noyon was with us; but he had
knowledge of the ancient man--a great character--and bade him tell us
the tale of the graveyard. He obeyed with unction and with gestures like
lightning as it flashes across a night sky. The looks his old eyes
darted forth as he talked might have struck a live German dead.

"The animals! What do you think they did when they were masters here?"
he snarled. "Ah, you do not know the Boches as we learned to know them,
so you would never guess. They opened our tombs, the vaults of
distinguished families of France. They broke the coffins and stole the