I demur. Any change will only mean out of the frying-pan into the fire. We may be slaughtered en route or arrested as spies. While I hesitate Madame la Précepteur rushes over attired as for a journey, carrying the little Germaine in cloak and bonnet. She is followed by Victor, dressed in sailor clothes. Their belongings are tied up in a large bag. “The inn will have to be kept open or it will be sacked,” I say. “I think I will stay here, Madame.” Mdlle Irma links her arm in mine and voices her determination to stay too. The others are just about to take their seats in the great rambling vehicle when M. le Précepteur comes running across the road, white faced and agitated. “They have caught a postman,” he says, “and torn up and scattered his letters over the forest.” No need to ask who “they” are! “Another postman has escaped by throwing his bicycle down by the roadside and plunging into the heart of the woods.” No one seems to know whether the first man was killed, though rumour surmises he is injured. The point is, these encounters take place on the very road the _malle-poste_ has to traverse. Afraid to stay, afraid to go, poor Madame Job is in a sad plight. Finally the huge washing-basket with its moorings of cord is safely transferred to the cemented kitchen floor. The Précepteur, his wife and children, the Job-Lepouses and numerous villagers who had turned in to bid them good-bye, have a kind of second breakfast of black bread and coffee round that inevitable big black stove which I always, in my own mind, call “the peasants’” friend. WHAT THE UHLANS THINK A furious fight is going on in the village street. Fists and tongues striving to outdo each other. _Les Prussiens_, of course. I think if the earth opened and swallowed us up we should at once attribute it to German atrocities! But this time the aubergiste is cuffing the picturesque poacher for something that gentleman has done. “Brave garçon,” sneers a passer-by. “Malain,” retorts the poacher fiercely. The peasants fling themselves on the malcontents and proclaim a truce. They argue rightly that only fools quarrel in war-time. Truth will out. There is method in the aubergiste’s madness. The poacher has confessed that he was responsible for our recent danger. Yesterday, it seems, he shot at a hare in the woods three miles away. A slender thread of evidence on which to convict us of treason, but apparently any excuse is sufficient for these arrogant Germans. I add my voice to the storm of eloquent advice, “Tickle trout, trap hares, lay night-lines, make use of any and every device known to the poaching mind, but _do not shoot_.” The culprit slinks meekly round the corner, still puffing at his curved-stem pipe. But I think he has learnt his lesson and will not be seen on the hills for some time to come....