icycle scout,
leaning on his wheel and trying to make himself understood in a
one-sided monosyllabic dialogue, with the two girls standing in their
window.

I asked him who he was. He showed his papers. They were all right--an
Irishman--Ulster--Royal Innisfall Fusiliers--thirteen years in the
service.

I asked him if there were any English soldiers left here. He said there
was still a bicycle corps of scouts at the foot of the hill, at Couilly.
I thought that funny, as Pere had said the town was absolutely deserted.
Still, I saw no reason to doubt his word, so when he asked me if I could
give him his breakfast, I brought him back to the house, set the table
in the arbor, and gave him his coffee and eggs. When he had finished,
he showed no inclination to go--said he would rest a bit. As Amelie was
in the house, I left him and went back to make the call my encounter
with him had interrupted. When I returned an hour later, I found him
fast asleep on the bench in the arbor, with the sun shining right on his
head. His wheel, with his kit and gun on it was leaning up against the
house. It was nearly noon by this time, and hot, and I was afraid he
would get a sunstroke; so I waked him and told him that if it was a rest
he needed,--and he was free to take it,--he could go into the room at
the head of the stairs, where he would find a couch and lie down
comfortably. He had sleepily obeyed, and must have just about got to
sleep again, when it occurred to me that it was hardly prudent to leave
an English bicycle with a khaki-covered kit and a gun on it right on the
terrace in plain sight of the road up which the Germans had ridden so
short a time before. So I went to the foot of the stairs, called him,
and explained that I did not care to touch the wheel on account of the
gun, so he had better come down and put it away, which he did. I don't
know whether it was my saying "Germans" to him that explained it, but
his sleepiness seemed suddenly to have disappeared, so he asked for the
chance to wash and shave; and half an hour later he came down all
slicked up and spruce, with a very visible intention of paying court to
the lady of the house. Irish, you see,--white hairs no obstacle. I
could not help laughing. "Hoity-toity," I said to myself, "I am getting
all kinds of impressions of the military."

While I was, with amusement, putting up fences, the gardener next door
came down the hill in great excitement to tell me