shattered, except the cellar of the main house, which had a painted sign over the door, "Notre Dame des Forêts," and then the hours of services. The interior had been whitewashed, and a rude altar built at the farther end. There were bullets, many of them, lying in front of the door. While we were looking around, an old man drove up with his wife in a rickety shay. He owned the place, and was coming for the first time to see what was left. I hated to have him get out and look. I knew his heart was breaking, and he was too old and already broken to ever be able to see it rebuilt. He was talkative, and took me out behind the barns to see his pride and joy: what once was a McCormick reaping machine, only just paid for at the outbreak of the war,--fifteen hundred francs,--now a mass of twisted, rusted iron and steel, hopelessly wrecked. He did not say much, only told what it cost, said it was his only new machine, and then walked away. I went back to the car. What in the world could I say? The others had by this time walked on farther, and I had to hurry to catch them. We inspected more dug-outs, and then went on to Noyon. Just before entering this town, we saw our first Boche prisoners. I don't know what a German soldier looks like ordinarily, but when shorn of his arms, buttons (taken as souvenirs), wearing a little gray cap with a red stripe around it on the top of his shorn head, he presents an amusing and pathetic appearance. I don't know what it is that is so very bedraggled about them, but they look so absurdly harmless, almost like the inhabitants of the Forest Hills insane asylum, when one sees them walking about the lawn or sitting under the trees on the way to Marion. They looked well fed and young. They were working, not very hard, but rather stolidly, I thought. Noyon seemed to be fairly well preserved, and very full of military life. We went to Headquarters, and procured that most necessary of things for a trip to the front--a French capitaine. He was very nice-looking and agreeable, and, as we discovered later on, very efficient. He let us look around the town a bit; in fact, I went into the cathedral for a minute, but as a service was going on, did not get much idea of what it was like. One thing caught my eye in the courtyard of the priest's house next door--a life-sized statue of some saint carrying a lamb. A shell had bitten a great piece out of the back of the figure, but he still held the lamb, unhurt.