thing but a
language of signs, but the old maire spoke English of the kind that
Queen Elizabeth used, and he acted as interpreter for the whole village.

When they understood that we were willing to pay for any damage done,
the bills came in in sheaves. Some boys, in ignorance, cut up for
firewood an old cedar log that was an heirloom. You would have thought
it was made of gold from the value put upon it by its owner. Fifteen
francs was asked for a bundle of straw that some boys made a bed of,
and some of our Australian horses did not know any better than to eat
the thatch off one old lady's bedroom, which not only cost us the price
of the thatch when it was new but also damages for fright. There was a
gap in the hedge that I had noticed when we entered the town, but it
cost us ten francs all the same. These people were not unpatriotic,
but to them it looked like the chance of a lifetime to acquire wealth,
and I have no doubt we pensioned several of them for life.

The war was to them like a catastrophe in another world, and
Australians did not travel farther to fight than in their imagination
did the sons of this village when they went to the trenches less than a
hundred miles away. I discovered one day how deep the knife of war had
cut when I spoke to a grandmother and daughter working a large farm, as
with dumb, uncomprehending pain in their eyes they showed me the
picture of son-in-law and husband who would never return. Rights of
peoples and the things for which nations strive had no meaning to these
two, but from out the dark had come a hand and dragged from them the
fulness of life, leaving only its empty shell.

Our headquarters billet was in the vacated house of the village squire.
He was a major in the French army, and had taken with him the young men
of the village committed to his charge. His wife had gone to nurse in
a hospital and they had put their children in a convent. He then left
the key in his door, saying that his house and its contents were at the
service of the officers of any British regiment that should come that
way. This house was a baronial castle, but in its furnishing knew as
little of modern conveniences as Hampden Court of William IV. We did
not smile, however, at the antimacassars, wax flowers, and samplers,
nor the scattered toys of the nursery, for we were guests of a kindly
host who, though absent himself, had intrusted to our care his
household gods and was a comrade in