And now the escort was ready. An order shouted in the field, and the men got up, falling in in some semblance of fours. Slowly they filed through the gate and, with their own officers in front, the cortege started. Led by an English cavalry subaltern, with troopers at four or five horses' lengths alongside--some with swords drawn, the others with rifles--the procession moved sullenly off. A throng of English soldiers gazed curiously at them as they passed by; small urchins ran in impudently making faces at them. And in the doors of the houses dark-haired, grim-faced women watched them pass with lowering brows.... A mixture, those prisoners--a strange mixture. Some with the faces of educated men, some with the faces of beasts; some men in the prime of life, some mere boys; slouching, squelching through the mud with the vacant eyes that the Prussian military system seems to give to its soldiers. The look of a man who has no vestige of imagination or initiative; the look of a stoical automaton; callous, boorish, sottish as befits a man who willingly or unwillingly has sold himself body and soul to a system. And as they wind through the mining villages on their way to a railhead, these same grim-faced French women watch them as they go by. They do not see the offspring of a system; they only see a group of beast-men--the men whose brothers have killed their husbands. After all, has not Madame got in her house a refugee--her cousin--whose screams even now ring out at night...? * * * * * For a few days more Jim stayed on with the general. Their feeding-place was a little cafe on the main road to Lens. There each morning might our hero have been found, in a filthy little back room, drinking coffee out of a thick mug, with an omelette cooked to perfection on his plate. Never was there such dirt in any room; never a household so prolific of children. Every window was smashed; the back garden one huge shell hole; but, absolutely unperturbed by such trifles, that stout, good-hearted Frenchwoman pursued her sturdy way. She had had the Boches there--"mais oui"--but what matter? They did not stay long. "Une omelette, monsieur; du cafe? Certainement, monsieur. Toute de suite."