erily at their task. In all the
villages we passed were battalions of infantry guarding the railway
bridges and level crossings. Patrols of cavalry rode slowly down
the roads. Here and there some of them were dismounted, with
their horses tethered, and from behind the cover of farmhouses
or haystacks, looked across the country, with their carbines slung
across their shoulders, as though waiting for any Uhlans that might
appear that way.

All around us was the noise of guns, firing in great salvoes across the
hills, ten miles or more away. Suddenly, as we approached the
junction at Arques, there was an explosion which sounded very close
to us; and the train came to a dead stop on grinding brakes.

"What's that?" asked a man in the carriage, sharply.

I thrust my head out of the carriage window and saw that all along the
train other faces were staring out. The guard was running down the
platform. The station-master was shouting to the engine-driver. In a
moment or two we began to back, and kept travelling backwards until
we were out of the station... The line had just been blown up beyond
Arques by a party of Uhlans, and we were able to thank our stars that
we had stopped in time. We could get no nearer to Bethune, over
which next day the tide of war had rolled. I wondered what had
happened to the wife and children of the man who was in the carriage
with me.

At Aire-sur-Lys there were groups of women and children who, like so
many others in those days, had abandoned their houses and left all
they had in the world save a few bundles of clothes and baskets of
food. I asked them what they would do when the food was finished.

"There will always be a little charity, m'sieur," said one woman, "and
at least my children are safe."

After the first terror of the invasion those women were calm and
showed astounding courage and resignation.

It was more than pitiful to see the refugees on the roads from
Hazebrouck. There was a constant stream of them in those two
cross-currents, and they came driving slowly along in bakers' carts
and butchers' carts, with covered hoods, in farm carts loaded up with
several families or trudging along with perambulators and
wheelbarrows. The women were weary. Many of them had babies in
their arms. The elder children held on to their mother's skirts or
tramped along together, hand in hand. But there was no trace of
tears. I heard no wailing cry. Some of them seemed utterly indifferent
to th