Before she could put the War finally away from her, Madeleine had to go through a process which might be called in English, the laying of ghosts. Without active belief in the supernatural, and prone to laughter at those who dared not pass the Kruysabel, after dusk, without crossing themselves (this superstition was one of the safeguards that had kept her meetings with Georges secure), she preserved to the full the clear feeling of all primitives, that the Living are connected with, influenced by, the Departed. The most immediate case was that of her father. Jerome Vanderlynden had never recovered his reason, but had recaptured a few words, and most of his bodily functions. What had been done, or not done, to him, during his eight months behind the German lines, will never be known. A neighbor, also swallowed up by the swift invasion of April, 1918, had seen him, near Lille, working in a field, under German direction, but had not been recognized. At that date, even, the old man had lost his senses. He bore no particular signs of ill-usage, other than the common starvation caused by blockade, and, after weeks of loving care, Madeleine, nearest to him, most like him of all people on earth, managed to make out what he mumbled to himself, with that scared look, when his food was set before him: “There’s nothing left to eat!” he whispered, with a frightened glance around. Then, when coaxed, he would eat, rapidly, defensively. Madeleine, no theorist, came to the conclusion that the fact that he had been interrupted in the middle of sowing his potatoes, and had then found the stock of food at Marie’s farm destroyed or taken, had unhinged his mind. At that she had to leave it, and although the old man’s iron health did not vary, she had sorrowfully to admit that, as father and parent, as companion and guide, he was gone from her, just as effectively as though she had buried him in the churchyard, beneath the battered, spireless old church, that filled all one side of the grande place of the village. So strongly did she feel this, that she refused to let the curé worry him about his soul. Thus was one ghost laid. * * * * * There was another ghost, one that haunted her with no material presence, did not inhabit the farm, but hovered, a dim gray figure at the back of her mind.