The villagers were satisfied that the coloured troops would stand till the last man, but there were many of their compatriots moving forward with their families to places more secure. Generally these fugitives were of the farming class, and each of the long, low farm wagons was a tale of tragedy of the war. Weary horses hauled vehicles piled up with household goods. The drivers were mere lads or old men, whose years unfitted them for military service, and packages of all sorts, and perambulators in some cases, occupied one-half of the space, and women and children, seated on hay and straw, the remainder. Nobody seemed to speak; abandoned homes and the fear that all was not well with the army in which their menfolk were serving made them dumb. But if there was panic, nobody showed it, for all met the situation with stolid countenances and were apparently ready to accept what the fates decreed. Passengers on the train were more alarmed. They, too, had heard that German cavalry were near, and they chafed at the vexatious stoppages every couple of hundred yards. But every move forward was nearer safety, and all seemed pleased that French infantry marched by the side of the train. A progress of a mile an hour for the last three miles satisfied nobody, and when Amiens was reached the summons given to passengers for Paris to change caused some concern. The lines were mainly occupied by troop trains, as they had been for eighteen hours. The French wastage of war has been more than made good in this region. You meet refugees by the thousand, and a man with a heart of flint would be sorry for them. On every grim visage is written the stern realities of war. Infinite suffering, aye, and splendid courage and patriotism, is lined on every face, and you feel when they pass you by that heroism is shared almost in an equal degree by most civilians and fighting men. Old Frenchmen, who have left behind them the fortunes they have built; children, who were learning to hope they would follow in worthy footsteps; dames who had earned repose by reason of arduous and thrifty years of activity, and younger women who gloried in husbands’ commercial enterprise and success, passed you, not broken people, but a crowd who will have to begin life anew when the scourge of war has ceased scarring the land.