The world is as still as the death all around us when we enter that little country graveyard. It has been trampled by a multitude. The five months that have elapsed and the hard work of the little old woman have not destroyed the signs of conflict there. But the time has taken the glory. The low stone wall that surrounds the place has been used as a barricade by the Zouaves. It is pierced with holes for their rifles. In many places portions of the wall are missing, showing where the shells have struck. In the center of the yard, one of them has opened a grave. It is a child's grave. I look down into the hole about three feet below the muddy surface of the yard. I see a weather-beaten headstone. It bears the child's name. A hundred years, according to date, that stone has silently borne witness of the few years of life before death, and then it has been rudely crushed into the earth on a glorious day in September. The graves of the soldiers who died there that same glorious day are all fresh mounds. There are only twenty or thirty mounds, but five hundred dead are buried beneath them. Above the mounds are freshly painted crosses. On some of them are roughly printed the names of the fallen officers. On several are wreaths or artificial flowers--beads in the shape of violets and yellow porcelain immortelles. In one corner under a little cross is inscribed the name of an English lieutenant of dragoons--aged twenty. The old caretaker says that his family may take his body to England when the war is over--but, of course, he is not buried in a coffin--just put into the ground on the spot where he was found clutching a fragment of his sword in his hand. We drive away to the north. On both sides of the road little clusters of black crosses are planted in the fields. Several times we pass great charred patches on the earth. These are the places where the Germans burned their dead before retreating. There are trenches too--trenches and the dead. There are old trenches and new--those made in a few hours while both armies alternately advanced and retreated, and those which the French engineers have made since for use if the Germans again advance. We are a dozen miles from the river Aisne when our chauffeur stops. If we go nearer we will be in "the zone of operations" where passes are rigidly required--where if one does not possess a pass one is under rigid suspicion. We do not take the chance of advancing further.