“I saw them cut this down; they measure so many centimeters from the ground; they start to saw; they cut so far through; they stop; it is destroyed! Ah, but I shall pluck apples this August, oh, beast pigs, brutes below all others!” she apostrophized quite calmly. “How may those who have the form of men be such fools, too?” she asked Ruth. “When they are here--those who bound me to the bed and their comrades--they say that they would be the friends of France. The English, they say, are our enemies; we shall see! Well, the English are about us now as they have been; and look, I have come of my own will away from Victor and Marie, leaving them alone, sleeping. Such danger now! And you, Mademoiselle, you are younger and as beautiful even as my Laurent’s wife--you go on, quite safe, unaccompanied.” Ruth proceeded quite safely, indeed; but not unaccompanied for long. The English, as Grand’mère Bergues said, were all about--a regiment was lying in reserve just then beyond Mirevaux; and a certain young lieutenant, who had been one of the guests at a tea at Mrs. Mayhew’s cottage a week ago, was awaiting Ruth upon the road. His name was Haddon-Staples; but he was so like “1582” of the _Ribot_ that Ruth had dubbed him to herself “1583” and she appreciated him hugely. Hardly had he caught step with her when the guns began--the English guns. The firing was heavy--no heavier, perhaps, than Ruth often had heard at night during the days near Mirevaux, but tonight it seemed to Ruth to have a more intense, more nervous quality. “Box barrage, sounds like,” Haddon-Staples volunteered when Ruth stopped to study the direction of the action. “Not much on, I should say. Trench raid for information, probably.” “When do you suppose they’ll attack?” They, of course, were the Germans. “Oh, any time. That’s what we’re out for a bit of a line on tonight--naturally. Sooner they try it, the better, don’t you think?” “You’re--we’re all ready for them?” Ruth asked. “Ready as may be,” the Englishman returned politely. “They’ve rather the advantage of us, you know--numerically. A good bit of a farm here again, isn’t there?” he shifted the subject, gazing over the level, planted fields. Ruth talked with him about other things; but her thought remained with those English guns firing and firing, with the English gunners serving them, with the English infantry raiding “for information” or lying in wait for the certain-coming attack of an enemy having a recognized advantage--numerically. The reason that the enemy possessed that advantage was, she knew, that America was not yet in force on the battle line. But for that tardiness, she had not yet heard one word of censure from Englishmen or from the French.