Madeleine, with all the contempt of the comparatively free and wealthy farmer’s daughter for the small railway official, and all the cunning of one who deals with beasts and the law, held her peace. The booking-office clerk was in that category of age and infirmity which alone in those days could exempt a man from mobilization. He worked fifteen hours a day in a pigsty of an office, whose glazed wicket made a perpetual draught. He was easily flustered. “You asked for two privilege tickets to go and see a wounded relative in hospital.” “That is what I said!” “This certificate is incomplete!” Madeleine said never a word, but leaned calmly on the ledge of the wicket, making herself look as stupid as she could, by letting her lower lip droop. Behind her a queue was forming. Already there were cries of: “Come on!” “The train goes in five minutes,” and a wag, “They are making a film for the cinema!” Tears of exasperation came into the little man’s eyes and his hand began to tremble. He stamped his foot. “Write the name of the relative you are going to visit.” “I have no pen.” Men were hammering on the partition and women were saying, “Are we going to miss the train in addition to all our other miseries?” The booking-office clerk flung his hairy crossed-nibbed pen at Madeleine. She took it, and wrote in the margin of Blanquart’s certificate the name of her dead brother, carefully using the Flemish script, which the railway people, mainly pure French, could not read. The paper was seized; the cards of identity, the privilege tickets, the change were thrust into her hands. She moved away, counting her change and smiling a very little to herself, and giving just a glance each to the English military policeman and the French gendarme at the platform entrance, both amused spectators of the scene. Behind her, the booking-office clerk kept chewing over the words “sacred peasants,” “swine’s luck,” and other expressions of feeling, as he jabbed the date on tickets and served them in frenzied haste to the crowd that besieged his wicket. On the wooden benches of the third-class compartment old Vanderlynden and Madeleine found many an acquaintance. There were cries of: “How goes it, Madeleine?” “Jerome, what are you jolly-well doing here, since when did you live St. Omer way?” * * * * * Madeleine, who had foreseen this contingency, nudged her father, and replied for both: