Moss-grown farmsteads, flanked by barns with green shutters fixed to the red bricks, draw-wells, chickens picking about on the manure-heaps,--these were my chief delight. Sometimes a countryman's cart with its white awning stood on one side for us to pass. We drove through Deurne, then through Wyneghem. For the third time a slender spire lifted its gray-slated point into the opaline sky. "S'Gravenwezel tower!" exclaimed Yana. "S'Gravenwezel! But that is your village!" I cried. "Are we going to live there?" The good creature smiled in the affirmative. Some few moments later, the driver, directed by Yana, stopped in front of a lonely farm, a quarter of an hour away from the rest of the long, straggling village. "This is my parents' home!" she said. I can still see the little one-storied farmhouse, with its overhanging thatched roof, festooned with stone-crop, a white chalk cross on the brickwork to protect it from lightning. At sound of the carriage, the whole household ran to the door. There was Yana's father, a short, thick-set sexagenarian, bent but still healthy-looking, his face wrinkled like old parchment, with a stiff beard and bright eyes; the mother, a buxom woman about ten years younger, very active despite her stoutness; then a host of brothers and sisters, varying from twenty-five to fifteen; the boys bold, dark, curly-headed, muscular, square-set fellows; the girls fresh-looking, tanned by the sun, all like Yana their elder sister, who, to my mind, was the most charming _boerine annversoise_ that one could imagine, with her dark hair, her big emerald-green eyes and sweeping lashes. In honor of S'Gravenwezel kermesse,--sounds of which could already be heard in the distance, --they said, but more in honor of our visit, the men wore their Sunday trousers, and bright blue smocks coquettishly gathered at the neck. The women had taken out their lace caps with big wings, the head-dresses with silver pins, woolen dresses, and large silk handkerchiefs which crossed over the breast and fell in a point behind. The good people complimented my father on his appearance. "That is Mynheer's son,--Jonkheer Jorss!" In a few moments I had made friends with these simple cordial folk, and particularly with a fine lad of nineteen--"onze Jan" (our Jean), said Yana--on the eve of drawing lots for the conscription.