"The pontoons are across. Everything is ready for the advance. I think we've got 'em." And he laughed as if it were all a game of cricket. By this time we were in the road. I sent Amelie on for the milk. He wheeled his machine up the hill beside me. He asked me if there was anything they could do for me before they moved on. I told him there was nothing unless he could drive out the Uhlans who were hidden near us. He looked a little surprised, asked a few questions--how long they had been there? where they were? how many? and if I had seen them? and I explained. "Well," he said, "I'll speak to the colonel about it. Don't you worry. If he has time he may get over to see you, but we are moving pretty fast." By this time we were at the gate. He stood leaning on his wheel a moment, looking over the hedge. "Live here with your daughter?" he asked. I told him that I lived here alone with myself. "Wasn't that your daughter I met?" I didn't quite fall through the gate backwards. I am accustomed to saying that I am old. I am not yet accustomed to have people notice it when I do not call their attention to it. Amelie is only ten years younger than I am, but she has got the figure and bearing of a girl. The lad recovered himself at once, and said, "Why, of course not,--she doesn't speak any English." I was glad that he didn't even apologize, for I expect that I look fully a hundred and something. So with a reiterated "Don't worry--you are all safe here now," he mounted his wheel and rode up the hills. I watched him making good time across to the route to Meaux. Then I came into the house and lay down. I suddenly felt horribly weak. My house had taken on a queer look to me. I suppose I had been, in a sort of subconscious way, sure that it was doomed. As I lay on the couch in the salon and looked round the room, it suddenly appeared to me like a thing I had loved and lost and recovered--resurrected, in fact; a living thing to which a miracle had happened. I even found myself asking, in my innermost soul, what I had done to deserve this fortune. How had it happened, and why, that I had come to perch on this hillside, just to see a battle, and have it come almost to my door, to turn back and leave me and my belongings standing here untouched, as safe as if there were no war,--and so few miles away destruction extending to the frontier.