A cup of strong coffee brought back a little color to her wan cheeks and
she told us she was from Charleville. The Taubes had got in their
sinister work to good advantage among the civil population but they were
merely the forerunners of another and heavier bombardment. The
townspeople had fled in their night clothes.

"Are you alone?"

"Yes--I'm not a native of Charleville. My husband and I have only been
married a year. He left the second of August and the baby was born the
tenth. She's only three weeks old."

No wonder the mother looked haggard--one hundred and fifty miles on
foot, with a newborn infant in her arms, fleeing for her life before the
barbarous hordes!

I pressed another cup of coffee with a drop of brandy in it upon her.
She looked appealingly at both of us and then drank.

"Was your husband good to you?" asked Madame Guix.

"Ah, yes, Madame."

"Do you love him well enough to endure another sacrifice like a true
wife and mother that you are?"

"Yes."

And then we told her that her baby bad gone--gone to a brighter Country
where war is unknown. She looked at us in amazement, and burying her
head on her arm, sobbed silently but submissively.

"Come, come, you must sleep--and when you are rested we will help you to
find room in a cart which will take you towards your parents."

She cast a long, loving look at her first born, and let herself be led
away.

All we could do was to make an official declaration of the death at the
town hall. A small linen sheet served as shroud, a clean, flower-lined
soap box formed that baby's coffin, and Greorge and I were the grave
diggers and chief mourners, who laid the tiny body at rest in the little
vine-grown churchyard. War willed it thus.

When I got back from the cemetery I found another load of refugees
installed in the courtyard. This time they proved to be a hotel keeper
and her servants from the Ardennes. They, however, had foreseen that
flight was imminent and had carefully packed a greater part of their
household belongings and valuables onto several wagons, taking care that
all were well balanced and properly loaded so as to carry the maximum
weight without tiring the horses. They needed less attention than the
others had required, for when I explained that the house was theirs,
they went about their work swiftly and silently, getting in no one's way
and attending to every want of their mistress, who sat in her coupe and
gave orders