A talkative military person in the compartment with us. I thought at first he was a secret agent, he seemed to know so little about the country; then I realized that he was only rather stupid. And he had an uncontrollable provincial curiosity about small things, and was quite _intrigué_ about his traveling companions, who seemed to know all the things he didn’t know. He was _en permission_, coming from the forest of Parroy, the other side of Lunéville, where the French and Germans sit within a few yards of each other. He was quite uninteresting about it all, but it wasn’t his fault, merely the way he was made. He showed me his map and the zigzagging German and French lines in the forest, and then I got suddenly bored and stood in the corridor, and watched the Meuse get pink and then purple and then a strange glinting black. Down the streets of little villages would come blue-clad men, smoking and talking, or getting water and stores for evening meals. And then the sun disappeared behind the yellow poplars, and a cold, clear night began to fall. Bridges were guarded by sentries with bayoneted rifles, and old men and women and children came in from dim beet-root fields, and more khaki-clad Americans were standing about village streets, or cycling in the dusk, behind reeds in water, and there were deepening forests, and black ridges against the last pale lemon glow, and then another little town, Laneuville, and two American patrols marching up and down with rifle on shoulder. And the talkative officer, who had bought newspapers at Gondrecourt, tells of the pretty spy dancer, Mata Hari, shot that morning in the prison of Vincennes with warning pomp and circumstance, and of Bolo Pasha and _l’affaire Turmel_, but as soon as he touches a subject it loses all vestige of human interest. “_Ce que nous avons vu d’Anglais parterre à Combes_,” or, “_Qu’il faisait froid la nuit où nous cédions la ligne aux Anglais_,” or, “_Je suis toujours là où on cède la ligne_, they say now the Americans will take the line at Parroy.” He has been through the whole war without a scratch—Verdun, the Somme, the Aisne—and now he spends cold, dark nights listening for Germans in the forest of Parroy, and it hasn’t helped a bit; and he is one that will get through, when so much of wise and fair will have been gathered to the Lord. In an unwonted pause I asked him what he was in civil life, and he answered, “_Fabricant de brosses à dent_.” I know it’s all right, and there must be tooth-brushes, but we had just come from gallooned generals, prefects, mayors, smart young aviators, and men living in the world of books. Blue mists came up from the meadows and slipped between the hills, and everywhere black trees grew out of gold water. LIGNY-EN-BARROIS.