She said nothing to her father or to the farmhands as to her errand. No one inquired. For a long while, ever since she had left the convent school, she had been mistress of her own actions and of other people’s. Old Vanderlynden, if he ever spoke of her to others, used not the peasant’s usual “Ma fille”--“my little girl,” but “Ma demoiselle”--“my young lady.” Her dress indicated nothing, for etiquette forbade her going beyond the farm in her old worn “every-day” and apron, clogs and upturned sleeves. Old men and women and children were plowing, manuring and weed-burning in the fields bordering the hedgeless road. She spoke to no one, and no one spoke to her. She met them all once a week, at Mass, and that was sufficient. One or two of them, glancing at her straight figure and level, unswerving gait, glanced at each other and grinned. The usual surmises were probably made, for it was known that she was keeping company with none of the young men of her generation before they were all hurried off to the War--and it was plainly unnatural that a good-looking young woman with a dowry should not be sought in marriage. These surmises were all the more interesting because nothing definite was known. Some hundreds of yards before reaching the Lille-Calais road, Madeleine passed under the shadow of one of those little woods of oak, crowning a small conical hill, that constitute the only untilled plots of the hard-worked Flemish border. Like its counterpart in all the neighboring parishes, this wood also was called the “Kruysabel” or Poplar-cross, on account of the crucifix that hid in its highest and thickest part, where its five “rides” met in a tiny clearing. To the south of this clearing was a little hunting shelter, brick, with mock-Gothic windows and leaded lights, encircled by a timber-pillared verandah, on which the thatch of the eaves descended, in the worst style of Lille garden-furnishing (“rustic work” in England). After entering the wood by a wicket, it was to this erection that Madeleine mounted by a soft squashy “ride” between impenetrable walls of oak sapling, planted as close as it would grow, and cut regularly, section by section, according to age, so that little could be seen but slim straight gray-green stems on all sides.