As I crossed the moat and passed under the archway, I saw the spot where the last Allied shell exploded, killing nineteen Germans, while the family and the 200 villagers in the cellars, where they had been for two weeks, escaped unharmed. In fact, in all the Deynze country I was in the midst of the destruction accompanying the final push of the liberating army, and was vividly reminded of what would have happened to the rest of Belgium had the armistice been further delayed. But already in the partially wrecked villages many of the women had gone back to their cushions—their reason-saving cushions, for they furnished practically the only employment to be had, and however small the earnings, they at least insured a few francs a week, and best of all they proved that something of the past persisted. In Vynck, a poor little town of 1,700 people, I found 40 Valenciennes-makers, and heard that 100 young girls were being taught at home by their mothers. I talked with two maiden sisters—one 68, the other 72—whom I spied hidden behind a window-screen of potted plants, working, with 450 bobbins each, on a kind of Valenciennes one finds only on the cushions of the past generation. They could not repeat often enough their gratitude to the Committee, which had been paying them 44 francs ($8.80) a meter for their lace, so much more than they had received before the war from the Courtrai facteur to whom they had sold. They counted on making about five meters during the winter ($44 worth), and they work from dawn sometimes till nine at night. In a neighboring house was a grandmother of eighty-one and her granddaughter, and on the grandmother’s cushion such a covering and re-covering of bobbins and lace, to keep them spotless. Over all she had spread a large towel, beneath it a worn napkin, then a piece of pink gingham, and below that two remnants of white and blue cloth, and it seemed appropriate that the snowy treasure, Valenciennes, too, should be revealed to me only after such a ceremony of unveiling as this bent old woman of Vynck performed. I passed quickly through Lootenhulle with its 125 workers, who make, among other varieties, good Duchesse and Rosaline; and Hansbeek, which produces a superior Valenciennes; and Ruysselede, with its excellent school for Valenciennes; to cross from the south to Destelbergen, which lies almost directly east of Ghent. All the plain was white under the first deep snow of winter, but to enjoy its loveliness one had to be able to forget the torn roofs and fireless hearths.