Achille found in his tail pocket surely the oldest and most faded of leather pocket-books. From this in turn he produced a piece of A.S.C. sacking, on which the word OATS was plainly printed in black. “Voila!” said the Maire. “Totally useless!” growled the Major, turning red. This made the Maire furious; he grasped the intonation and expression if not the words. “You others, you are enough to send one to sleep standing up. One produces the _corroborative_ pieces and you treat them as useless.” And there followed a tirade during which Dormer drew the Major outside, with profuse _Bonjours!_ He thought that Blanquart was trying to sign to him that he wanted to say something to him privately. But the Major was upset, his dignity was hurt. A soldier by profession, he had reduced the settlement of claims to a fine art. He was said to have settled three thousand between the time he was made A.P.M. to the division on the Aisne to the day of his death at Bailleul. He told the chauffeur to drive to Vanderlynden’s. The man seemed to know the way, and had probably been to the place many times. As the car jolted and ground over the cobbles into the yard, Dormer said: “I shall ask for the daughter, Madeleine.” “Just so!” “I don’t believe----” “Nor do I,” said the Major stoutly. Neither of them could pronounce the word “rape.” They got out, knocked at the door and knocked again. The place seemed not so much empty and deserted as enveloped in one of those encompassing noises that only sort themselves out on investigation. Too deep for a separator, too near for an aeroplane, Dormer diagnosed it: “They’ve got the Government thrasher in the back pasture, next the rye!” (He had a good memory and could tell pretty well how most of the people distributed crops and work.) They recrossed the bridge of the moat and skirting the latter entered the back pasture. There against the gate that gave on to the arable “plain,” as it was called in those parts, was the Government thrasher, the women labourers, and right on the top of the stack, old Vanderlynden. Dormer shouted! Vanderlynden paid not the slightest heed. Perhaps he was deaf, no doubt the thrasher buzzed loud enough; but above all he was one of those old peasants whose only reply to this unheard-of War in which all had been plunged was to work harder and more continuously, and to show less and less consciousness of what went on round about them. There he stood, black against that shy and tender blue of Flemish sky, the motions of his body mechanical, his face between collarless shirt and high-crowned, peaked cap, expressionless. Finally, Dormer took one of the short stout girls that were employed in raking the straw away from the travelling band, and shook her roughly by the arm. She was, of course, a refugee Belgian. No one else would work like that, not even a Chinese woman. Like a clockwork figure, she began to speak in “English”: