appeared, escorting a
French lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morning. The prisoner was
a little, handsome, dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, wearing
his trim blue-and-red uniform with an air, even though he himself looked
thoroughly miserable. We were warned not to speak with him, or he with
us; but Gerbeaux, after listening to him exchanging a few words with the
lieutenant, said he judged from his accent that the little officer was
from the south of France.

We silently offered him a bowl of the soup as he sat in a corner fenced
off from the rest of us by a small table; but he barely tasted it, and
after a bit he lay down in his corner, with his arm for a pillow, and
almost instantly was asleep, breathing heavily, like a man on the verge
of exhaustion. A few minutes later we heard, from Sergeant Rosenthal,
that the prisoner's brother-in-law had been killed the day before, and
that he--the little officer--had seen the brother-in-law fall.

Five p.m. We have had good news--two chunks of good news, in fact.
We are to dine and we are to travel. The sergeant has acquired, from
unknown sources, a brace of small, skinny, fresh-killed pullets; eight
fresh eggs; a big loaf of the soggy rye bread of the field mess; and
wine unlimited. Also, we are told that at nine o'clock we are to start
for Brussels--not by automobile, but aboard a train carrying wounded and
prisoners northward.

Everybody cheers up, especially after ma-dame promises to have the fowls
and the eggs ready in less than an hour.

The Belgian photographer, who, it develops, is to go with our troop, has
been brought in from the guardhouse and placed with us. With the
passing hours his fright has increased. Gerbeaux says the poor devil is
one of the leading photographers of Brussels--that by royal appointment
he takes pictures of the queen and her children. But the queen would
have trouble in recognizing her photographer if she could see him now--
with straw in his tousled hair, and his jaw lolling under the weight of
his terror, and his big, wild eyes staring this way and that. Nothing
that Gerbeaux can say to him will dissuade him from the belief that the
Germans mean to shoot him.

I almost forgot to detail a thing that occurred a few minutes ago, just
before the Belgian joined us. Mittendorfer brought a message for the
little French lieutenant. The Frenchman roused up and, after they had
saluted each other ceremoniously, Mittendo