“No bon offizer billet all full you go Mairie!” without stopping for one moment her raking. Dormer held her forearm rigid, and stopped her. “_Saagte patron heer t’kom!_” That reached her consciousness. Throwing down her implement, she put both hands to her mouth and began shouting “Hoi!” at old Vanderlynden, and might have gone on shouting indefinitely if Dormer had not gone round to the French Army mechanic who drove the machine and given him an English canteen cigarette. That would have stopped an offensive. It soon stopped the thrasher and Vanderlynden looked down at his visitors. “Good day, Patron!” called Dormer; “can we see Mademoiselle?” The old man got down with unexpected agility. “Good day, my officer, what is it that there is?” Dormer held out the blue claim form. At the sight of it, there came into Vanderlynden’s face the look that a mule gives its feed, when, expecting and even enjoying bits of wood, leather, and nails, it comes across a piece of tin: not so much protest as long and malevolent calculation of the unknown. As a matter of fact he could not read more of it than his signature. He muttered once or twice, “_myn reclamorsche_,” but got no further. “Can we see Mademoiselle?” repeated Dormer. The old man stared at him with the incredulity of a villager who finds a stranger ignorant of village news: “But, my officer, my young lady is gone!” At that moment the French mechanic, who had lighted his cigarette and now only wanted to be done with the job, put his lever over, and set the thrasher buzzing again. As if spell-bound, old Vanderlynden gave one leap and regained his place on the stack. The Belgians fell to at their several jobs. The corn flew, the wheels whizzed, the grain rattled in the hopper, the straw swished in long swathes beneath the rakes. Dormer and the Major were left standing, idle and forgotten, with their War, while the real business of the farm went steadily forward, only a little hastened because the thrasher had to be at Watten next day. They walked back to the car, in a black frame of mind. Neither spoke, from war habit of not mentioning the omnipresent perversity of things. But Madeleine Vanderlynden’s departure from the farm, coming after the wording of the claim, was ominous indeed. Travelling by motor has many disadvantages, but against all these it has one crowning advantage: to those who are weary and overspent, it provides more immediately and completely than any other physical sensation the feeling of escape. What magic lies behind that word! To get into the car and go, no matter whither, and to leave at any rate one incomprehensible muddle behind him: that was the illusion while the chauffeur was starting.