, rested, and trained to their
various areas of concentration, to take their place by the side of their
French Allies.

All this was accomplished without a single hitch, and with a speed that
was astonishing. When the time comes for the inner history of the war to
be written, no doubt proper praise for these preliminary arrangements
will be given to those who so eminently deserve it.

CHAPTER II

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Peace reigned for the next five days, the last taste of careless days
that so many of those poor fellows were to have.

A route march generally occupied the mornings, and a musketry parade the
evenings. Meanwhile, the men were rapidly accustoming themselves to the
new conditions. The Officers occupied themselves with polishing up their
French, and getting a hold upon the reservists who had joined the
Battalion on mobilisation.

The French did everything in their power to make the Battalion at home.
Cider was given to the men in buckets. The Officers were treated like
the best friends of the families with whom they were billeted. The
fatted calf was not spared, and this in a land where there were not too
many fatted calves.

The Company "struck a particularly soft spot." The miller had gone to
the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children.
Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much
trouble. Madame Mere resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in
command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and
rabbits for the meals of her hungry Officers.

The talk that was indulged in must have been interesting, even though
the French was halting and ungrammatical. Of all the companies' Messes,
this one took the most serious view of the future, and earned for itself
the nickname of "Les Miserables." The Senior Subaltern said openly that
this calm preceded a storm. The papers they got--_Le Petit Parisian_ and
such like--talked vaguely of a successful offensive on the extreme
right: Muelhouse, it was said, had been taken. But of the left, of
Belgium, there was silence. Such ideas as the Subaltern himself had on
the strategical situation were but crude. The line of battle, he
fancied, would stretch north and south, from Muelhouse to Liege. If it
were true that Liege had fallen, he thought the left would rest
successfully on Namur. The English Army, he imagined, was acting as
"general reserve," behind the French line, and would not be