A countryman with a drooping white moustache brought us some beer and wine in buckets. He lived in an isolated house easily visible from our barn, in a copse on the side of the hill. During the German occupation he had left his house as being too solitary and had taken up his quarters in the village. When the enemy took their departure the day before yesterday he had returned to his house accompanied by a foot-soldier. He was going on ahead when through the broken-in front door he saw, in the hall, a helmeted German in the act of aiming at him. He jumped to one side, exposing the French soldier behind him, whereupon the German at once dropped his rifle and threw up his hands. The two Frenchmen seized him and, sitting him down on a chair in the kitchen, shot him through the head. There they left him, still sitting, his head on his breast and the blood dripping from his forehead between his knees on to the tiled floor, and went off to reconnoitre the surroundings of the house and the garden. They could discover nothing suspicious, but when they returned to the kitchen they found it empty. Nothing remained of the German save a pool of blood in front of the chair. But near the door and on the stairs were red stains and they heard groans coming from the garret. We asked the peasant: "Well, what did you do with your Boche?" "Oh, he's still in my garret," he answered placidly. "But you must get him out of that. He'll soon begin to smell!" "Yes, I'm going to dig a hole for him to-night near the dung-heap." And, as I ventured to say that instead of killing the man treacherously they might have taken him prisoner, seeing that he had surrendered: "Why?" asked the peasant. "Wouldn't he have killed me if I'd been all alone? And yet I'm a civilian!" "No!" he added, "we shall never kill enough of those swine!" * * * * * The wind had risen and the rain ceased. Our Group advanced along the Compiègne road, which runs by the side of the river. But we had hardly gone a mile when the word was given to halt. We prepared to make our soup, but there was no water, and I searched in vain for a spring or well. Finally we decided to draw water from the Aisne. On the opposite bank a dead German was lying among the rushes, half his body submerged in the stream. Well, we would boil the water, that was all! One must eat! As night fell a horseman arrived with orders. We set off at a trot.