Above and below it was framed by a line of helmeted men in khaki, and as we neared I saw they were _our_ black troops; the horizon-blue of a French infantry regiment made the frame at the two sides. High, high up were a group of white- and black-gowned priests, and red- and white-gowned acolytes swinging their censers. At the top of the steep stairway, running down the middle of the black-crossed cemetery, was a sacerdotal figure, with outstretched arms, exhorting, and around about the whole were groups of women and children. We left the motor and walked over to the cemetery, where I found myself standing near the resting-place of Norman Hall, the first American to die in Alsace. From the tall, black cross floats the Stars and Stripes, and some one had planted chrysanthemums thick on his grave. Peace to him. He lies not far from General Serret, who fell, too, on the nearby sacrificial Hartmannswillerkopf, where commingled lie fifty thousand who at the word of command had put out each other’s light. After the sermon the negro band of the Fifteenth played some grave and measured music, the French infantry band then something a little too gay. As one of the officers said afterward, “_Cela a presque frisé la polka_.” Then the “Marseillaise” sounded and “The Star-spangled Banner.” I felt my veil wet against my eyes and my lips atremble as I thought, a second time that day, how well, how very well, the soldier sleeps. Above the cemetery in a higher contour of eternal hill was a great patch of yellow and black and rust-colored forest against a clear blue-white sky, in which tiny black specks were moving eastward. We waited to watch the negro troops defile. They appeared very smartly dressed till the eye got to their feet, and such a collection of ripped, torn, cut, down-at-the-heel footgear was never seen! They seem to be a flat-footed race, too. I spoke to a couple of darkies very much _en repos_, who were leaning against a fence, near the motor, as I got in. One answered, with a broad grin, “You an American from America?” “Yes.” “Well, have you heard dis here war’s about over?” The coalest-black one then contributes this to the conversation: “When peace is signed dis here nigger starts to walk home.” “What about the ocean?” “I’ll take a swim, lady; the water can’t be no colder and no damper dan dis here ‘Alice’ land.” The mulatto by his side said, “I subscribes,” and became a pale gray at the bare idea of getting colder or damper. Then we see Commandant Poulet, tall, blue-clad, with high decorations a-shine, coming toward us, and he and many officers are presented to me, after which I change into his motor, and we start out over a magnificent military road built since the war. It was begun and completed almost miraculously, it would seem, in little more than a year, and over it, safely hidden from German guns, come and go the great military supplies of the Alsatian front—troops, artillery, munitions, food, ambulances.